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THE 



CAMPAIGN OF 1860, 



COMPRISING THE 



SPEECHES 



ow 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 

HENRY WILSON, BENJAMIN F. WADE, 

CARL SCHURZ, CHARLES SUMNER, 

WILLIAM M. EVARTS, &c. 



ALBANY : 
1860. 



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,^ EVENING JOURNAL TRAOTS.—No. 1. 

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X THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 

i — — 



-A. SFEEOH 



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BY 



WILLIAM H. SEWAED, 



DELIVERED AT ROCHESTER, MONDAY, OCT. 25, 1858. 



a.>ELLOW-CiTizENS: The unmistakable out- 
breaks of zeal which occur all around me, show 
that you are earnest men — and such a man am 
I. Let us therefore, at least for a time, pass by 
all secondary and collateral questions, whether 
'^ a personal or of a general nature, and con- 
sider the main subject of the present canvass. 
The Democratic party — or, to speak more ac- 
curately — the party which wears that attract- 
ive name, is in possession of the Federal Gov- 
ernment. The Republicans propose to dislodge 
that party, and dismiss it from its high trust. 

The main subject, then, is, whether the De- 
mocratic party deserves to retain the confidence 
of the American People. In attempting to 
prove it unworthy, I think that I am not actu- 
ated by prejudices against that party, or by 
prepossessions in favor of its adversary ; for I 
have learned, by some experience, that virtue 
-and patriotism, vice and selfishness, are found 
in all parties, and that they differ less in their 
motives than in the pohcies they pursue. 

Our country is a theatre, which exhibits, in 
full operation, two radically different political 
systems ; the one resting on the basis of servile 
or slave labor, the other on the basis of volun- 
tary labor of freemen. 

The laborers who are enslaved are all negroes, 
or persons more or less purely of African deri- 
vation. But this is only accidental. The prin- 
ciple of the system is, that labor in every so- 
ciety'', by whomsoever performed, is necessarily 
unintellectual, grovelling and base; and that 
the laborer, equally for his own good and for 
the welfare of the State, ought to be enslaved. 
The white laboring man, whether native or for- 
eigner, is not enslaved, only because he cannot, 
as yet, be reduced to bondage. 

You need not be told now that the slave 



system is the older of the two, and that once 
it was universal. 

The emancipation of our own ancestors, Cau- 
casians and Europeans as they were, hardly 
dates beyond a period of five hundred years. 
The great mehoration of human society which 
modern times exhibit, is mainly due to the in- 
complete substitution of the system of volun- 
tary labor for the old one of servile labor, which 
has already taken place. This African slave 
system is one which, in its origin and in its 
growth, has been altogether foreign from the 
habits of the races which colonized these States, 
and established civilization here. It was intro- 
duced on this new continent as an engine of 
conquest, and for the estabhshment of monar- 
chial power, by the Portuguese and the Span- 
iards, and was rapidly extended by them all 
over South America, Central America, Louisi- 
ana, and Mexico. Its legitimate fi-uits are seen 
in the poverty, imbecility, and anarchy, which 
now pervade all Portuguese and Spanish A.me- 
rica. The free-labor system is of German ex- 
traction, and it was estabhshed in our country 
by emigrants fi:om Sweden, Holland, Germany, 
Great Britain, and Ireland. 

We justly ascribe to its influences the strength, 
wealth, greatness, intelligence, and freedom, 
which the whole American people now enjoy. 
One of the chief elements of the value of human 
Ufe is freedom in the pursuit of happiness. The 
slave system is not only intolerable, unjust, and 
inhuman, towards the laborer, whom, only be- 
cause he is a laborer, it loads down with chains 
and converts into merchandise, but is scarcely 
less severe upon the freeman, to whom, only 
because he is a laborer fi-om necessity, it de- 
nies faciUties for employment, and whom it 
expels from the community because it cannot 



For Sale at the Office of the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Single Copy, 2c. ; 
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enslave and convert him into merchandise also. 
It is necessarily improvident and ruinous, be- 
cause, as a general truth, communities prosper 
and flourish or droop and decline in just the 
degree that they practise or neglect to practise 
the primary duties of justice and humanity. 
The free-labor system conforms to the divine 
l&w of equality, which is written in the hearts 
and consciences of men, and therefore is always 
and everywhere beneficent. 

The slave system is one of constant danger, 
distrust, suspicion, and watchfulness. It deba- 
ses those whose toil alone can produce wealth 
and resources for defence, to the lowest degree 
of which human nature is capable, to guard 
against mutiny and insurrection, and thus 
wastes energies which otherwise might be em- 
ployed in national development and aggran- 
dizement. 

The free-labor system educates all alike, and 
by opening all the fields of industrial employ- 
ment, and all the departments of authority, to 
the unchecked and equal rivalry of all classes 
of men, at once secures universal contentment, 
and brings into the highest possible activity all 
the physical, moral, and social energies of the 
whole State. In States where the slave-sys- 
tem prevails, the masters, directly or indirectly, 
secure all political power, and constitute a ru- 
ling aristocracy. In States where the free-labor 
system prevails, universal suffrage necessarily 
obtains, and the State inevitably becomes, 
sooner or later, a republic or democracy. 

Eussia yet maintains slavery, and is a despo- 
tism. Most of the other European States have 
abohshed slavery, and adopted the system of 
free-labor. It was the antagonistic political 
tendencies of the two systems which the first 
Napoleon was contemplating when he predict- 
ed that Europe would ultimately be either all 
Cossack or all RepubHcan. Never did human 
sagacity utter a more pregnant truth. The 
two systems are at once perceived to be incon- 
gruous. But they are more than incongruous 
— they are incompatible. They never have 
permanently existed togetlier in one country, 
and they never can. It would be easy to de- 
monstrate this impossibility, from the irreconcil- 
able contrast between their great principles and 
characteristics. But the experience of mankind 
has conclusively established it. Slavery, as I 
have already intimated, existed in every State 
in Europe. Free labor has supplanted it every- 
Avhere except in Russia and Turkey. State 
necessities developed in modern times, are now 
obliging even those two nations to encourage 
and employ free labor; and already, despotic 
as they are, we find them engaged inabohsh- 
ing slavery. In the United States, slavery 
came into collision with free labor at the close 
of the last century, and fell before it in New 
England, New York, New Jersey, and Penn- 
sylvania, but triumphed over it effectually, and 
excluded it for a period yet undetermined, from 
Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Indeed, 
so incompatible are the two systems, that every 
new State which is organized within our ever- 



extending domain makes its first political act a 
choice of the one and an exclusion of the other, 
even at the cost of civil war, if necessary. The 
slave States, without law, at the last national 
election, successfully forbade, within their own 
limits, even the casting of votes for a candidate 
for President of the United States supposed to 
be favorable to the establishment of the free- 
labor system in new States. 

Hitherto, the two systems have existed in 
different States, but side by side within the 
American Union. This has happened because 
the Union is a confederation of States. But in 
another aspect the United States constitute only 
one nation. Increase of population, which is 
filling the States out to their very borders, to- 
gether with a new and extended net-work of 
railroads and other avenues, and an internal 
commerce which daily becomes more intimate, 
is rapidly bringing the States into a higher and 
more perfect social unity or consolidation. 
Thus, these antagonistic systems are continu- 
ally coming into closer contact, and colhsion 
results. 

Shall I tell you what this collision means ? 
They who think that it is accidental, unneces- 
sary, the work of interested or fanatical agita- 
tors, and therefore ephemeral, mistake the case 
altogether. It is an irrepressible conflict be- 
tween opposing and enduring forces, and it 
means that the United States must and will, 
sooner or later, become either entirely a slave- 
holding nation, or entirely a free-labor nation. 
Either the cotton and rice fields of South Caro- 
lina and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will 
ultimately be tilled by free labor, and Charleston 
and New Orleans become marts for legitimate 
merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and 
wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York 
must again be surrendered by their farmers to 
slave culture and to the production of slaves, 
and Boston and New York become once more 
markets for trade in the bodies and souls of 
men. It is the failure to apprehend this great 
truth that induces so many unsuccessful at- 
tempts at final compromise between the slave 
and free States, and it is the existence of tliis 
great fact that renders all such pretended com- 
promises, when made, vain and ephemeral. 
Starthng as this saying may appear to you, fel- 
low-citizens, it is by no means an original or 
even a moderate one. Our forefathers knew 
it to be true, and unanimously acted upon it 
when they framed the Constitution of the 
United States. They regarded the existence 
of the servile system in so many of the States 
with sorrow and shame, which they openly 
confessed, and they looked upon the colhsion 
between them, which was then just reveahng 
itself, and which we are now accustomed to 
deplore, with favor and hope. They knew 
that either the one or the other system must 
exclusively prevail. 

Unlike too many of those who in modern 
time invoke their authority, they had a choice 
between the two. They preferred the system 
of free labor, and they determined to organize 



3 



the Government, and so to direct its activity, 
that that system should surely and certainly 
prevail. For this purpose, and no other, they 
based the whole structure of Grovernment 
broadly on the principle that all men are 
created equal, and therefore free — little dream- 
ing that, within the short period of one hun- 
dred years, their descendants would bear to 
be told by any orator, however popular, that 
the utterance of that principle was merely a 
rhetorical rhapsody; or by any judge, how- 
ever venerated, that it was attended by men- 
tal reservations, which rendered it hypocriti- 
cal and false. By the Ordinance of 1787, they 
dedicated all of the national domain not yet 
polluted by Slavery to free labor immediately, 
thenceforth -and forever ; while by the new 
Constitution and laws they invited foreign 
free labor from all lands under the sun, and 
interdicted the importation of African slave 
labor, at all times, in all places, and under all 
circumstances whatsoever. It is true that 
they necessarily and wisely modified this 
policy of Freedom, by leaving it to the several 
States, affected as they were by differing cir- 
cumstances, to abolish slavery in their own 
way and at their own pleasure, instead of 
confiding that duty to Congress, and that they 
secured to the Slave States, while yet retain- 
ing the system of Slavery, a three-fifths repre- 
sentation of slaves in the Federal Grovernment, 
until they should find themselves able to re- 
hnquish it with safety. But the very nature 
of these modifications fortifies my position 
that the fathers knew that the two systems 
could not endure within the Union, and ex- 
pected that within a short period Slavery 
would disappear forever. Moreover, in order 
that these modifications might not altogether 
defeat their grand design of a Republic main- 
taining universal equahty, they provided that 
two-thirds of the States might amend the 
Constitution. 

It remains to say on this point only one 
word, to guard against misapprehension. If 
these States are to again become universally 
slave-holding, I do not pretend to say with 
what violations of the Constitution that end 
shall be accomplished. On the other hand, 
while I do confidently beheve and hope that 
my country will yet become a land of univer- 
sal Freedom, I do not expect that it will be 
made so otherwise than through the action 
of the several States co-operating with the 
Federal Grovernment, and all acting in strict 
conformity with their respective Constitutions. 

The strife and contentions concerning Sla- 
very, which gently-disposed persons so habi- 
tually deprecate, are nothing more than the 
ripening of the conflict which the fathers 
themselves not only thus regarded with favor, 
but which they may be said to have insti- 
tuted. 

It is not to be denied, however, that thus 
far the course of that contest has not been 
according to their humane anticipations and 
wishes. In the field of federal politics, Sla- 



very, deriving unlooked-for advantages from 
commercial changes, and energies unforeseen 
from the facihties of combination between 
members of the slaveholding class and between 
that class and other property classes, early 
ralhed, and has at length made a stand, not 
merely to retain its original defensive position, 
but to extend its sway throughout the whole 
Union. It is certain that the slaveholding 
class of American citizens indulge this high 
ambition, and that they derive encouragement 
for it from the rapid and effective political 
successes which they have aheady obtained. 
The plan of operation is this : By continued 
appliances of patronage and threats of dis- 
union, they will keep a majority favorable to 
these designs in the Senate, where each State 
has an equal representation. Through that 
majority they will defeat, as they best can, 
the admission of free States and secure the 
admission of slave States. Under the protec- 
tion of the Judiciary, they will, on the princi- 
ple of the Dred Scott case, carry Slavery into 
all the Territories of the United States now 
existing and hereafter to be organized. By 
the action of the President and the Senate, 
using the treaty-making power, they will an- 
nex foreign slaveholding States. In a favor- 
able conjuncture they will induce Congress to 
repeal the act of 1808, which prohibits the 
foreign slave-trade, and so they wiU import 
from Africa, at the cost of only $20 a head, 
slaves enough to fill up the interior of the 
continent. Thus relatively increasing the 
number of slave States, they will allow no 
amendment to the Constitution prejudicial to 
their interest; and so, having permanently 
established their power, they expect the 
Federal Judiciary to nullify aU State laws 
which shall interfere with internal or foreign 
commerce in slaves. When the free States 
shall be sufficiently demoralized to tolerate 
these designs, they reasonable conclude that 
Slavery will be accepted by those States them- 
selves. I shall not stop to show how speedy 
or how complete would be the ruin which 
the accomplishment of these slaveholding 
schemes would bring upon the country. For 
one, I should not remain in the country to 
test the sad experiment. Having spent my 
manhood, though not my whole fife, in a free 
State, no aristocracy of any kind, much less 
an aristocracy of slaveholders, shall ever make 
the laws of the land in which I shall be con- 
tent to five. Having seen the society around 
me universally engaged in agriculture, manu-. 
factures and trade, which were innocent and 
beneficent, I shall never be a denizen of a 
State where men and women are reared as 
cattle, and bought and sold as merchandise. 
When that evil day shall come, and all further 
effort at resistance shall be impossible, then, 
if there shall be no better hope for redemption 
than I can now foresee, I shall say with Frank- 
lin, while looking abroad over the whole earth 
for a new and more congenial home, '' Where 
Hberty dwells, there is my country." 



You will tell me that these fears are extra- 
vagant and chimerical. I answer, they are 
so ; but they are so only because the designs 
of the slaveholders must and can be defeated. 
But it is only the possibility of defeat that 
renders them so. They cannot be defeated 
by inactivity. There is no escape from them, 
compatible with non-resistance. How, then, 
and in what way, shall the necessary resist- 
ance be made ? There is only one way. The 
Democratic party must be permanently dis- 
lodged from the Government. The reason is, 
that the Democratic party is inextricably com- 
mitted to the designs of the slaveholders, 
which I have described. Let me be well un- 
derstood. I do not charge that the Demo- 
cratic candidates for public office now before 
the people are pledged to, much less that the 
Democratic masses who support them really 
adopt, those atrocious and dangerous designs. 
Candidates may, and generally do, mean to 
act justly, wisely, and patriotically, when they 
shall be elected ; but they become the mini- 
sters and servants, not the dictators, of the 
power which elects them. The pohcy which 
a party shall pursue at a future period is only 
gradually developed, depending on the occur- 
rence of events never fully foreknown. The 
motives of men_, whether acting as electors or 
in any other capacity, are generally pure. 
Nevertheless, it is not more true that "Hell is 
paved with good intentions," than it is that 
earth is covered with wrecks resulting from 
innocent and amiable motives. 

The very constitution of the Democratic 
party commits it to execute all the designs of 
the slaveholders, whatever they may be. It 
is not a party of the whole Union, of all the 
free States and of all the slave States ; nor yet 
is it a party of the free States in the North 
and in the Northwest ; but it is a sectional 
and local party, having practically its seat 
within the slave States, and counting its con- 
stituency chiefly and almost exclusively there. 
Of all its representatives in Congress and in 
the Electoral Colleges, tAVO-thirds uniformly 
come from these States. Its great element of 
strength lies in the vote of the slaveholders, 
augmented by the representation of three- 
fifths of the slaves. Deprive the Democratic 
party of tl^is strengtli, and it would be a help- 
less and hopeless minority, incapable of con- 
tinued organization. The Democratic party, 
being thus local and sectional, acquires new 
strength from the admission of every new 
slave State, and loses relatively by the admis- 
sion of every new free State into the Union. 

A party is in one sense a joint-stock associ- 
ation, in which those who contribute most 
direct the action and management of the con- 
cern. The slaveholders contributing in an 
overwhelming proportion to the capital strength 
of the Democratic party, they necessarily dic- 
tate and prescribe its policy. The inevitable 
caucus system enables them to do so with a 
show of fairness and justice. If it were pos- 
sible to conceive for a moment that the Demo- 



cratic party should disobey the behests of the 
slaveholders, we should then see a withdrawal 
of the slaveholders, which would leave the 
party to perish. The portion of the party 
which is found in the free States is a mere ap- 
pendage, convenient to modify its sectional 
character, without impairing its sectional con- 
stitution, and is less effective in regulating 
its movement than the nebulous tail of the 
comet is in determining the appointed though 
apparently eccentric course of the fiery sphere 
from which it emanates. 

To expect the Democratic party to resist 
Slavery and favor Freedom, is as unreasonable 
as to look for Protestant missionaries to the 
Catholic Propaganda of Rome. The history 
of the Democratic party commits it to the 
policy of Slavery. It has been the Demo- 
cratic party, and no other agency, which has 
carried that policy up to its present alarming 
culmination. Without stopping to ascertain, 
critically, the origin of the present Democratic 
party, we may concede its claim to date from 
the era of good feeling which occurred under 
the Administration of President Monroe. At 
that time, in this State, and about that time in 
many others of the free States, the Democratic 
party dehberately disfranchised the free colored 
or African citizen, and it has pertinaciously 
continued this disfranchisement ever since. 
This was an effective aid to Slavery ; for while 
the slaveholder votes for his slaves against 
Freedom, the freed slave in the free States is 
prohibited from voting against Slavery. 

Ir; 1824, the Democracy resisted the elec- 
tion of Jolm Quincy Adams — himself before 
that time an acceptable Democrat — and in 
1828, it expelled him from the Presidency and 
put a slaveholder in his place, although the 
office had been filled by slaveholders thirty- 
two out of forty years. 

In 1836, Martin Van Buren — the first non- 
slaveholding citizen of a free State to whose 
election the Democratic party ever consented 
— signalized his inauguration into the Presi- 
dency by a gratuitous announcement, that 
under no circumstances would he ever approve 
a bill for the abolition of Slavery in the Dis-r 
trict of Columbia. From 1838 to 1844, the 
subject of abolishing Slavery in the District 
of Columbia and in the national dock-yards 
and arsenals was brought before Congress by 
repeated popular appeals. The Democratic 
party thereupon promptly denied the right of 
petition, and effectually suppressed the free- 
dom of speech in Congress, so far as the insti- 
tution of Slavery was concerned. 

From 1840 to 1843, good and wise men 
counselled that Texas should remain outside 
of the Union until she should consent to re- 
linquish her self-instituted Slavery; but the 
Democratic party precipitated her admission 
into the Union, not only without that condi- 
tion, but even with a covenant that the State 
might be divided and reorganized so as to con- 
stitute four slave States instead of one. 

In 1846, when the United States became in- 



volved in a war with Mexico, and it was ap- 
parent that the struggle would end in the dis- 
memberment of that republic, which was a 
non-slaveholding power, the Democratic party 
rejected a declaration that Slavery should not 
be established within the territory to be ac- 
quired. When, in 1850, governments were to 
be instituted in the Territories of California and 
New Mexico, the fruits of that war, the Dem- 
ocratic party refused to admit Ncav Mexico as 
a free State, and only consented to admit Cah- 
fbrnia as a free State on the condition, as it 
has since explained the transaction, of leaving 
all of New Mexico and Utah open to Slavery, 
to which was also added the concession of per- 
petual Slavery in the District of Columbia, and 
the passage of an unconstitutional, cruel, and 
humihating law, for the recapture of fugitive 
slaves, with a further stipulation that the sub- 
ject of Slavery should never again be agitated 
in either chamber of Congress. When, in 
1854, the slaveholders were contentedly repos- 
ing on these great advantages, then so recently 
won, the Democratic party unnecessarily, 
ofi&ciously, and with superserviceable liberality, 
awakened them from their slumber, to offer 
and force on their acceptance the abrogation 
of the law which declared that neither Slavery 
nor involuntary servitude should ever exist 
within that part of the ancient territory of' 
Louisiana wliich lay outside of the State of Mis- 
souri, and north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30 m. 
of north latitude — a law which, with the ex- 
ception of one other, was the only statute of ^ 
Freedom then remaining in the Federal code. 
In 1856, when the people of Kansas had or- 
ganized a new State within the region thus 
abandoned to Slavery, and applied to be ad- 
mitted as a free State into the Union, the 
Democratic party contemptuously rejected 
their petition, and drove them with menaces 
and intimidations, from the Halls of Congress, 
and armed the President with military power 
to enforce their submission to a slave code, es- 
tablished over them by fraud and usurpation. 
At every subsequent stage of the long contest 
which has since raged in Kansas, the Demo- 
cratic party has lent its sympathies, its aid, and 
all the powers of the Government which it con- 
trolled, to enforce Slavery upon that unwilling 
and injured people. And now, even at this 
day, while it mocks us with the assurance that 
Kansas is free, the Democratic party keeps the 
State excluded from her just and proper place 
in the Union, under the hope that she may be 
dragooned into the acceptance of Slavery. 

The Democratic party, finally, has procured 
from a Supreme Judiciary, fixed in its interest, 
a decree that Slavery exists by force of the 
Constitution in every Territory of the United 
States, paramount to all legislative authority, 
either within the Territory, or residing in Con- 
gress. 

Such is the Democratic party. It has no 
policy. State or Federal, for finance, or trade, 
or manufacture, or commerce, or education, or 
internal improvements, or for the protection or 



even the security of civil or rehgious liberty. 
It is positive and uncompromising in the in- 
terest of Slavery — negative, compromising, and 
vacillating, in regard to everything else. It 
boasts its love of equality, and wastes its 
strength, and even its life, in fortifying the only 
aristocracy known in the land. It professes 
fraternity, and, so often as Slavery requires, 
allies itself with proscription. It magnifies it- 
self for conquests in foreign lands, but it sends 
the national eagle forth always with chains, 
and not the olive branch, in his fangs. 

This dark record shows you, fellow-citizens, 
what I was unwilhng to announce at an earlier 
stage of this argument, that of the whole nefa- 
rious schedule 'of slaveholding designs which I 
have submitted to you, the Democratic party 
has left only one yet to be consummated — the 
abrogation of the law which forbids the African 
slave trade. 

Now, I know very well that the Democratic 
party has, at every stage of these proceedings, 
disavowed the motive and the policy of forti- 
fying and extending Slavery, and has excused 
them on entirely different and more plausible 
grounds. But the inconsistency and frivolity 
of these pleas prove still more conclusively the 
guilt I charge upon that party. It must, in- 
deed, try to excuse such guilt before mankind, 
and even to the consciences of its own adher- 
ents. There is an instinctive abhorrence of 
Slavery, and an inborn and inhering love of 
Freedom in the human heart, which render pal- 
liation of such gross misconduct indispensable. 
It disfranchised the free African on the ground 
of a fear that, if left to enjoy the right of suf- 
frage, he might seduce the free white citizen 
into amalgamation with his wronged and de- 
spised race. The Democratic party con- 
demned and deposed John Quincy Adams, 
because he expended $12,000,000 a yeai', 
while it justifies his favored successor in spend- 
ing $70,000,000, $80,000,000, and even 
$100,000,000, a year. It denies emancipation 
in the District of Columbia, even with com- 
pensation to masters and the consent of the peo- 
ple, on the ground of an implied constitutional 
inhibition, although the Constitution expressly 
confers upon Congress sovereign legislative 
power in that District, and although the Dem- 
ocratic party is tenacious of the principle of 
strict construction. It violated the express pro- 
visions of the Constitution in suppressing peti- 
tion and debate on the subject of Slavery, 
through fear of disturbance of the public har- 
mony, although it claims that the electors have a 
right to instruct their representatives, and even 
demand their resignation in cases of contumacy. 
It extended Slavery over Texas, and connived 
at the attempt to spread it across the Mexican 
territories, even to the shores of the Pacific 
Ocean, under a plea of enlarging the area of 
Freedom. It abrogated the Mexican slave law 
and the Missouri Compromise prohibition of 
Slavery in Kansas, not to open the new Ter- 
ritories to Slavery, but to try therein the new 
and fascinating theories of Non-intervention 



and Popular Sovereignty ; and, finally, it over- 
threw both these new and elegant systems by 
the English Lecompton bill and the Dred Scott 
decision, on the ground that the free States 
ought not to enter the Union without a popu- 
lation equal to the representative basis of one 
member of Congress, although slave States 
might come in without inspection as to their 
numbers. 

Will any member of the Democratic party 
now here claim that the authorities chosen by 
the suffrages of the party transcended their 
partisan platforms, and so misrepresented the 
party in the various transactions I have recited ? 
Then I ask him to name one Democratic states- 
man or legislator, from Yan Buren to Walker, 
who either timidly or cautiously like them, or 
boldly and defiantly like Douglas, ever refused 
to execute a behest of the slaveholders and was 
not therefor, and for no other cause, immedia- 
tely denounced, and deposed from his trust, and 
repudiated by the Democratic party for that 
contumacy. 

I think, fellow-citizens, that I have shown 
you that it is high time for the friends of Free- 
dom to rush to the rescue of the Constitution, 
and that their very first duty is to dismiss the 
Democratic party from the administration of 
the Government. 

Why shall it not be done ? All agree that 
it ought to be done. What, then, shall prevent 
its being done ? Nothing but timidity or di- 
vision of the opponents of the Democratic 
party. 

Some of these opponents start one objection, 
and some another. Let us notice these ob- 
jections briefly. One class say that they can- 
not trust the Republican party; that it has 
not avowed its hostihty to Slavery boldly 
enough, or its affection for Freedom earnestly 
enough. 

I ask, in reply, is there any other party 
which can be more safely trusted ? Every one 
knows that it is the Republican party, or none, 
that shall displace the Democratic party. But 
I answer, further, that the character and 
fidelity of any party are determined, neces- 
sarily, not by its pledges, programmes, and 
platforms, but by the public exigencies, and the 
temper of the people when they call it into 
activity. Subserviency to Slavery is a law 
written not only on the forehead of the Demo- 
cratic party, but also in its very soul — so resis- 
tance to Slavery, and devotion to Freedom, 
the popular elements now actively Avorking 
for the Republican party among the people, 
must and wih be the resources for its ever- 
renewing strength and constant invigoration. 

Others cannot support the Republican party, 
because it has not sufficiently exposed its plat- 
form, and determined what it will do, and what 
it will not do, when triumphant. It may prove 
too progressive for some, and too conservative 
for others. As if any party ever foresaw so 
clearly the course of future events as to plan a 
universal scheme for future action, adapted to 
all possible emergencies. Who would ever 



have joined even the Whig party of the Revo- 
lution, if it had been obliged to answer, in 1775, 
whether it would declare for Independence in 
1776, and for this noble Federal Constitution 
of ours in 1787, and not a year earlier or 
later? 

The people of the United States will be as 
wise next year, and the year afterward, and 
even ten years hence, as we are now. They 
will obhge the Republican party to act as the 
public welfare and the interests of justice 
and humanity shall require, through all the 
stages of its career, whether of trial or 
triumph. 

Others will not venture an effort, because 
they fear that the Union would not endure 
the change. Will such objectors tell me how 
long a Constitution can bear a strain directly 
along the fibres of which it is composed? 
This is a Constitution of Freedom. It is 
being converted into a Constitution of Slavery. 
It is a republican Constitution. It is being 
made an aristocratic one. Others wish to 
wait until some collateral questions concern- 
ing temperance, or the exercise of the elective 
franchise are properly settled. Let me ask all 
such persons, whether time enough has not 
been wasted on these points already, without 
gaining any other than this single advantage, 
namely, the discovery that only one thing can be 
effectually done at one time, and that the one 
thing which must and will be done at any one 
time is just that thing which is most urgent, 
and will no longer admit of postponement or 
delay. Finally, we are told by faint-hearted 
men that they despond ; the Democratic party, 
they say, is unconquerable, and the dominion 
of Slavery is consequently inevitable. I reply 
to them, that the complete and universal do- 
minion of Slavery would be intolerable enough 
when it should have come after the last possi- 
ble effort to escape should have been made. 
There Avould, in that case, be left to us the con- 
soling reflection of fidehty to duty. 

But I reply further, that I know — few, I 
thmk, know better than I — the resources and 
energies of the Democratic party, which is 
identical with the Slave Power. I do ample 
prestige to its traditional popularity. I know, 
further — few, I think, know better than I — the 
difficulties and disadvantages of organizing a 
new political force, like the Republican party, 
and the obstacles it must encounter in laboring 
without prestige and without patronage. But, 
understanding all this, I know that the Demo- 
cratic party must go down, and that the Re- 
publican party must rise into its place. The 
Democratic party derived its strength, origin- 
ally, from its adoption of the principles of equal 
and exact justice to all men. So long as it 
practised this principle faithfully, it was invul- 
nerable. It became vulnerable when it re- 
nounced the principle, and since that time it 
has maintained itself, not by virtue of its own 
strength, or even of its traditional merits, but 
because there as yet had appeared in the poht- 
ical field no other party that had the conscience 



and the courage to take up, and avow, and 
practise the hfe-inspiring principle which the 
Democratic party had surrendered. At last, 
the RepubUcau party has appeared. It avows, 
now, as the Repubhcan party of 1800 did, in 
one word, its faith and its works, " Equal and 
exact justice to all men." Even when it first 
entered the field, only half organized, it struck 
a blow which only just failed to secure com- 
plete and triumphant victory. In this, its sec- 
ond campaign, it has already won advantages 
which render that triumph how both easy and 
certain. 

The secret of its assured success lies in that 
very characteristic which, in the mouth of scof- 
fers, constitutes its great and lasting imbecihty 
and reproach- It hes in the fact that it is a 
party of one idea ; but that idea is a noble one 
— an idea that fills and expands all generous 
souls ; the idea of equahty — the equality of all 
men before human tribunals and human laws, 



as they all are equal before the Divine tribunal 
and Divine laws. 

I know, and you know, that a revolution has 
begun. I know, and ah the world knows, that 
revolutions never go backward. Twenty Sen- 
ators and a hundred Representatives proclaim 
boldly in Congress to-day sentiments and opin- 
ions and principles of Freedom which hardly 
so many men, even in this free State, dared to 
utter in their own homes twenty years ago. 
While the- Grovernment of the United States, 
under the conduct of the Democratic party, 
has been all that time surrendering one plain 
and castle after another to Slavery, the people 
of the United States have been no less steadily 
and perseveringly gathering together the forces 
with which to recover back again all the fields, 
and all the castles which have been lost, _ and 
to confound and overthrow, by one decisive 
blow, the betrayers of the Constitution an^ 
Freedom forever. 



"NEGRO SLAVERY NOT UNJUST." 



j^ SFEEOHL 



BY 



CHAELES O'CONOE, 

AT THE UHION MEETING, 

At the Academy of Music, New York City, December 19, 1859. - 



Mr. Mayor and G-entlemen : — I cannot ex- 
press to you the delight which I experience 
in beholding in this great city so vast an as- 
sembly of my fellow-citizens, convened for 
the purpose stated in your resolutions. I am 
delighted beyond measure to behold at this 
time so vast an assembly responding to. the 
call of a body so respectable as the twenty 
thousand New Yorkers who have convened 
this meeting. If anything can give assurance 
to those who doubt, and confidence to those 
who may have had misgivings as to- the per- 
manency of our institutions, and the soli,^fy 
of the support which the people of tha. Sf^j-th 
are prepared to give them, it is that'tm the 
queen city of the New World, in t^e -capital 
of North America, there is assembled a meet- 
ing so large, so respectable, and so unanimous 
as this meeting has shown itself to be in re- 
ceiving sentiments which, if observed, must 
protect our Union from" destruction, and even 
from danger. (Applause.) Gentlemen, is it not 
a subject of astonishment that the idea of 



danger, and the still mctf-e dreadful idea of 
dissolution, should be heeixd from the lips of 
an American citizen, at this day, in reference 
to, or in connecfion;with, the sacred name of 
this most S9,cced Union ? (Applause.) Why 
gentlemen., ;^liat is our Union? What are its 
antecedents f,~ What is its present condition ? 
If Avfh Ward ofi" the evils which threaten it, 
what -its future hope for us and for the great 
•^^^' of mankind ? Why, gentlemen, it may 
■^^r be said of this Union as a government, 
*4hat as it is the last offspring, so is it Time's 
most glorious and beneficent production. G-en- 
tlemen, we are created by an Omniscient 
Being. We are created by a Being not only 
'All-Seeing, but All-Powerful and All- Wise. 
And in the benignity and the farseeing wis- 
dom of His poAver, He permitted the great 
family of mankind to live on, to advance, to 
improve, step by step, and yet permitted five 
thousand years and upward to elapse ere He 
laid the foundation of a truly free, a truly 
happy, and a truly independent empire. Jt 



8 



was not gentlemen, until that great length of 
time had elapsed, that the earth was deemed 
mature for laying the foundations of this 
mighty and prosperous State. It was then 
that He inspired the noble-minded and chival- 
rous Genoese to set forth upon the trackless 
ocean and discover the empire that we now 
enjoy. But a few years, comparatively, had 
elapsed when there was raised up in this 
blessed land a set of men whose hke had never 
before existed upon the face of tliis earth. 
Men unequaled in their perceptions of the 
true principles of justice, in their comprehen- 
sive benevolence, in their capacity to lay 
safely, justly, soundly, and with all the quali- 
ties which should insure permanency, .the 
foundations of an empire. It was in 1776, 
and in this country, that there assembled the 
first, the very first, assembly of rational men 
who ever proclaimed, in clear and undeniable 
form, the immutable principles of liberty, and 
consecrated, to aU time I trust, in the face pf 
tyrants, and in opposition to their power, the 
rights of nations and the rights of men. (Ap- 
plause.) These patriots, as soon as the storm 
of war had passed away, sat down and framed 
that instrument upon which our Union rests, 
the Constitution of the United States of Ame- 
rica. (Applause.) And the question now be- 
fore us is neither more nor less than ' this : 
whether that Constitution, consecrated by the 
blood shed in that glorious Revolution, con- 
secrated by the signature of the most illus- 
trious man who ever lived, Greorge Washing- 
ton (applause) — whether that instrument, 
accepted by the wisest and by the best of that 
day, and accepted in convention, one by one, 
in each and every State of this Union — that 
instrument from which so many blessings 
have flown — whether that instrument was 
conceived "in crime, is a chapter of abomina- 
tions (cries of " No, no "), is a violation of 
justice, is a league between strong-handed but 
wicked-hearted white men to oppress, and im- 
proverish, and plunder their fellow-creatures, 
contrary to rectitude, honor and justice. (Ap- 
plause.) This is the question, neither more 
nor less. We are told from pulpits, we are 
told from the political rostrum, we are told 
in the legislative assemblies of our Northern 
States, not merely by speakers, but by distinct 
resolutions of the whole body — Ave are told by 
gentlemen occupying seats in the Congress of 
the Union through the votes of Northern peo- 
ple — that the Constitution seeks to enshrine, 
to protect, to defend a monstrous crime 
against justice and humanity, and that it is 
our duty to defeat its provisions, to outwit 
them, if we cannot otherwise get rid of tlieir 
effect, and to trample upon the rights which it' 
has declared shall be protected and insured to 
our bretliren of the South. (Applause.) That is 
the doctrine now advocated. * And I ask 
whether that doctrine, necessarily involving the 
destruction of our Union, shall be permitted to 
prevail as it has hitherto prevailed ? Gentle- 
men, I trust you will excuse me for deUberately 



coming up to and meeting this question — not 
seeking to captivate your fancies by a trick of 
words — not seeking to exalt your imaginations 
by declamation or by any eflbrt at eloquence, 
— but meeting this question gravely, sedately, 
and soberly, and asking you what is to be our 
course in relation to it ? Gentlemen, the Con- 
stitution guarantees to the people of the South- 
ern States the protection of their slave pro- 
perty. In that respect it is a solemn compact 
between the North and the South. As a 
solemn compact, are we at liberty to violate 
it? (Cries of "No, no !") Are we at liberty 
to seek or take any mean, petty advantage of 
it? (Cries of "No, no!") Are we at liberty 
to con over its particular words, and to re- 
strict and to limit its operation, so as to acquire 
under such narrow construction, a pretence of 
right by hostile and adverse legislation? 
("No ! no !") — to interfere with the interests, 
wound the feelings, and trarnple on the pohti- 
cal rights of our Southern feUow-citizens ? 
(No ! no ! no !") No, gentlemen. If it be a 
compact, and has anything sacred in it, we 
are bound to observe it in good faith, honestly 
and honorably, not merely to the letter, but 
fully to the spirit, and not in any mincing, 
half-way, unfair, or illiberal construction, 
seeking to satisfy the letter, to give as little 
as we can, and thereby to defeat the spirit. 
(Applause.) That may be the way that some 
men keep a contract about the sale of a house 
or of a chattel, but it is not the way honest 
men observe contracts, even in relation to the 
most trivial things. (" True," and applause.) 
What has been done, having a tendency to 
disturb harmony under this Constitution, and 
to break down and destroy the union now ex- 
isting between these States? Why, gentle- 
men, at an early period the subject of slavery, 
as a mere philosophical question, was dis- 
cussed by many, and its justice or injustice 
m.ade the subject of argument leading to vari- 
ous opinions. It mattered httle how long 
tliis discussion should last, while it was con- 
fined within such limits. If it had only led 
to the formation of societies like the Shakers, 
who do not believe in matrimony; societies 
like the people of Utah, destined to a short 
career, who beheve in too much of it (laugh- 
ter); or societies of people like the strong- 
minded women of our country, who beheve 
that women are much better qualified thau 
men to perform the functions and offices usu- 
ally performed by men (laughter) — and who 
probably would, if they had their way, simply 
change the order of proceedings, and transfer 
the husband to the kitchen, and themselves 
to the field or the cabinet. (Laughter and 
applause.) So long, I say, as this sentimen- 
tality touching slavery confined itself to tho 
formation of parties and societies of this des- 
cription, it certainly could do no great harm, 
and we might satisfy ourselves with the maxim 
that " Error can do little harm as long as truth 
is left free to combat it." But unfortunately, 
gentlemen, this sentimentality has found its 



9 



way out of the meeting-liouses — from among 
pious people, assemblies of speculative philoso- 
phers, and societies formed to benefit the in- 
habitants of Barioboola-gha — it has found its 
way into the heart of the selfish pohtician ; 
it has been made the war-cry of pajiy ; it has 
been made the instrument whereby to elevate 
not merely to personal distinction and social 
rank, but to pohtical power. Throughout the 
non-slaveholding States of this Union, men 
have been thus elevated who advocate a course 
of conduct necessarily exasperating the South, 
and the natural effect of whose teachings ren- 
ders the Southern people insecure in their pro- 
perty and their fives, making it a matter of 
doubt each night whether they can safely re- 
tire to their slumbers without sentries and 
guards to protect them against incursions from 
the North. I say the effect has been to ele- 
vate, on the strength of this sentiment, such 
men to power. And what is the result — the 
condition of things at this day ? Why, gen- 
tlemen, the occasion that calls us together is 
the. occurrence of a raid upon the State of Vir- 
ginia by a few misguided fanatics — followers 
of these doctrines, with arms in their hands, 
and bent on rapine and murder. I called them 
followers, but they should be deemed leaders. 
They were the best, the bravest, and the most 
virtuous of all the abolition party. (Applause.) 
On the Lord's day, at the hour of still repose, 
they armed the bondman with pikes brought 
from the North, that he might slay his master, 
his master's wife, and his master's fittle chil- 
dren. And immediately succeeding to it — at 
this very instant — what is the pohtical ques- 
tion pendmg before Congress ? 

A book substantially encouraging the same 
course of provocation toward the South which 
has been long pursued, is openly recommended 
to circulation by sixty-eight members of your 
Congress. (Cries of "Shame on them," ap- 
plause, and hisses.) Recommended to circu- 
lation by sixty-eight members of your Con- 
gress, all elected in Northern States (hisses 
and applause) — every one, I say, elected from 
non-slaveholding States. And with the assist- 
ance of their associates, some of whom hold 
their ofl&ces by your votes, there is great dan- 
ger that they will elect to the highest office 
in that body, where he will sit as a represen- 
tative of the whole North, a man who united 
in causing that book to be distributed through 
the South, carrying poison and death in its 
polluted leaves. ("Hang him," and applause.) 
Is it not fair to say that this great and glorious 
Union is menaced when such a state of things 
is found to exist ? when such an act is at- 
tempted ? Is it reasonable to expect that our 
brethren of the South will calmly sit down 
("No.") and submit quietly to such an out- 
rage? (Cries of "No, no.") Why, gentle- 
men, we greatly exceed them in numbers. 
The non-slaveholding States are by far the 
more populous ; they are increasing daily in 
numbers and in population and we may soon 
overwhelm the Southern vote. If we con- 



tinue to fill the halls of legislation with aboli- 
tionists, and permit to occupy the executive 
chair men who declare themselves to be en- 
listed in a crusade against slavery, and against 
the provisions of the Constitution which secure 
that species of property, what can we reason- 
ably expect from the people of the South but 
that they will pronounce the Constitution — 
with all its glorious associations, with all its 
sacred memories — this Union, with its mani* 
fold present and promised blessings — an unen- 
durable evil, threatening to crush and to des- 
troy their most vital interests — to make their 
country a wilderness. Why should we expect 
them to submit to such a line of conduct on 
our part, and recognize us as brethren, or 
unite with us in perpetuating the Union ? 

¥oT my part I do not see anything unjust 
or unreasonable in the declaration often made 
by Southern members on this subject. They 
tell us : "If you will thus assail us with incen- 
diary pamphlets, if you will thus create a spirit 
in your country which leads to violence and 
bloodshed among us, if you will assail the in- 
stitution upon which the prosperity of our 
country depends, and will elevate to office 
over us men who are pledged to aid in such 
transactions, and to oppress us by hostile legis- 
lation, we cannot — much as we revere the 
Constitution, greatly as we estimate the bless- 
ings which would flow from its faithful en- 
forcement — we cannot longer depend on your 
compliance with its injunctions, or adhere to 
the Union." For my part, gentlemen, if the 
North continues to conduct itself in the selec- 
tion of representatives to the Congress of the 
United States as, from, perhaps, a certain de- 
gree of neghgence and inattention, it has here- 
tofore conducted itself, the South is not to be 
censured if it withdraws from the Union. 
(Hisses and applause. A voice — " that's so." 
Three cheers for the Fugitive Slave Law.) 
We are not, gentlemen, to hold a meeting to 
say that "We love this Union; we dehght in 
it ; we are proud of it ; it blesses us, and we 
enjoy it ; but we shall fill all its offices with 
men of our own choosing, and, our brethren 
of the South, you shall enjoy its glorious past ; 
you shall enjoy its mighty recollections; but it 
shall trample your institutions in the dust." 
We have no right to say it. We have no right 
to exact so much ; and an opposite and entire- 
ly different course, fellow-citizens, must be 
ours — must be the course of the gr^at North, 
if we would preserve this Union. (Applause, 
and cries of " G-ood.") 

And, gentlemen, what is this glorious 
Union? What must we sacrifice if we ex- 
asperate our brethren of the South, and com- 
pel them, by injustice and breach of compact, 
to separate from us and to dissolve it ? Why, 
gentlemen, the greatness and glory of the 
American name will then be a thing of yester- 
day. The glorious Revolution of the thirteen 
States will be a Revolution not achieved by 
us, but by a nation that has ceased to exist. 
The name of Washington will be, to us at 



10 



least at the North, (cheers), but as the name of 
JuUus Caesar, or of some other great hero who 
has hved in times gone by, whose nation has 
perished and exists no more. The Declaration 
of Independence, what will that be ? Why, 
the declaration of a State that no longer has 
place among the nations. All these bright 
and glorious recollections of the past must 
cease to be our property, and become mere 
memorials of a by-gone race and people. A 
hne must divide the North from the Soutk 
What will be the consequences? Will this 
mighty city — growing as it now is, with 
wealth pouring into it from every portion of 
this mighty empire — ^will it continue to flour- 
ish as it has done? (Cries of ''No, no!") 
Will your marble palaces that hne Broadway, 
and raise their proud tops toward the sky, 
continue to increase, until, as is now promised 
under the Union, it shall present the most 
glorious picture of wealth, prosperity, and 
happiness, that the world has ever seen? 
(Applause.) No! gentlemen, no! such things 
cannot be, I do not say that we will starve, 
that we will perish, as a people, if we sepa- 
rate from the South. I admit, that if the line 
be drawn between us, they wiU have their 
measure of prosperity, and we will have ours ; 
but meagre, small in the extreme, compared 
with what is existing, and promised under our 
Union, will be the prosperity of each. 

Truly has it been said here to-night, that 
we were made for each other; separate us, 
and although you may not destroy us, you re- 
duce each to so low a scale that well might 
humanity deplore the evil courses that 
brought about the result. True, gentlemen, 
we would have left, to boast of, our share of 
the glories of the Revolution. The Northern 
States sent forth to the conflict their bands of 
heroes, and shed their blood as freely as those 
of the South, But the dividing line would 
take away from us the grave of Washington. 
It is in his own beloved Virginia. (Applause 
and cheers.) It is in the State and near the 
spot where this treason that has been growing 
up in the North, so lately culminated in vio- 
lence and bloodshed. We would lose the grave 
— we would lose all connection with the name 
of Washington, But our philanthropic and 
pious friends who would fain lead us to this 
result, would, of course, comfort us with the 
consoling reflection that we had the glorious 
memor}'- of John Brown in its place, (Great 
laughter and cheers,) Are you, gentlemen, pre- 
pared to make the exchange ? (Cries of " No, 
no.") Shall the tomb of Washington, that 
rises upon the bank of the Potomac, receiving 
its tribute from every nation cf the earth — 
shaU that become the property of a foreign 
State — a State hostile to us in its feelings, and 
we to it in ours ? Shall we erect a monument 
among the arid hills at North Elba, and deem 
the privilege of making pilgrimages thither a 
recompense for the loss of every glorious recol- 
lection of the past, and for our severance from 
the joame of Washingtoa ? He who is recog- 



nized as the Father of his Country ? (Cries of 
"No, no," and cheers.) No, gentlemen, we are 
not prepared, I trust, for this sad exchange, this 
fatal severance. We are not prepared, I trust, 
either to part with our glorious past or to give 
up the advantages of our present happy condi- 
tion. We are not prepared to relinquish our 
affection for the South, nor to involve our section 
in the losses, the deprivation of blessings and 
advantages necessarily resulting to each from 
disunion. Gentlemen, we never would have 
attained the wealth and prosperity as a nation 
which is now ours, but for our connection with 
these very much reviled and injured slave- 
holders of the Southern States. And, gentle- 
men, if dissolution is to take place, we must 
part with the trade of the South, and thereby 
surrender our participation in the wealth of the 
South. Nay, more — we are told from good 
authority, that we must not only part with the 
slave-holding States, but that our younger 
sister with the golden crown — rich, teeming 
California, she who added the final requisite to 
our greatness as a nation — will not come with 
us. She wiU remain with the South. 

Gentlemen, if we allow this course of injus- 
tice toward the South to continue, these are to 
be the consequences — evil to us, evil also to 
them. Much of all that we are most proud of; 
much of all that contributes to our prosperity 
and greatness as a nation, must pass away from 
us. 

The question is — Should we permit it to be 
continued, and submit to all these evils ? Is 
there any reason to justify such a course ? There 
is a reason preached to us for permitting it. 
We are told that slavery is imjust; we are told 
that it is a matter of conscience to put it down; 
and that whatever treaties or compacts, or laws, 
or constitutions, have been made to sanction 
and uphold it, it is still unholy, and that we are 
bound to trample upon treaties, compacts, laws 
and constitutions, and to stand by what these 
men arrogantly tell us is the law of God and a 
fundamental principle of natural justice. In- 
deed, gentlemen, these two things are not dis- 
tinguishable. The law of God and natural jus- 
tice, as between man and man, are one and the 
same. The wisest philosophers of ancient times 
— heathen philosophers — said, The rule of con- 
duct between man and man is, to live honestly, 
to injure no man, and to render to every man 
his due. In words far more direct and emphatic, 
in words of the most perfect comprehensive- 
ness, the Saviour of the world gave us the same 
rule in one short sentence — " Love thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." (Applause.) Now, speaking 
between us, people of the North and our breth- 
ren of the South, I ask you to act upon this 
maxim— the maxim of the heathen — the com- 
mand of the living God: "Bender to every 
man his due," "Love thy neighbor as thyself." 
(Applause.) Thus we should act and feel to- 
ward the South. Upon that maxim which 
came from Him of Nazareth we should act to- 
ward the South, but without putting upon it 
any new-fangled, modern interpretation. We 



11 



should neither say nor think that any Gospel 
minister of this day is wiser than God himself 
— than He who gave us the Gospel. These 
maxims should govern between us and our 
brethren of the South. But, gentlemen, the 
question is this : Do these maxims justify the 
assertion of those who seek to invade the rights 
of the South, by proclaiming negro slavery un- 
just? That is the point to which this great 
argument, involving the fate of our Union, must 
now come. Is negro slavery unjust ? If it be 
unjust, it violates the first rule of human con- 
duct, "Render to every man his due." If it be 
unjust, it violates the law of God which says, 
" Love thy neighbor as thyself," for that law 
requires that we should perpetrate no injustice. 
Gentlemen, if it could be maintained that ne- 
gro slavery is unjust, is thus in conflict with 
the law of nature and the law of God, perhaps 
I might be prepared — perhaps we all ought to 
be prepared to go with that distinguished man 
to whom allusion is frequently made, and say, 
there is a "higher law" which compels us to 
trample beneath our feet, as a wicked and un- 
holy compact, the Constitution estabhshed by 
our fathers, with all the blessings it secures to 
their children. But I insist — and that is the ar- 
gument which we must meet, and on which we 
must come to a conclusion that shall govern our 
action in the future selection of representatives 
in the Congress of the United Qt&tes— I iRsist 
that negro slavery is not unjust. (Long continued 
applause.) It is not unjust ; it is just, wise and 
heneficent. (Hisses, followed by applause, and 
cries of "put him out.") Let him stay, gentlemen. 

President — Let him stay there. Order. 

Mr. O'CoNOR — Serpents may hiss, but good 
men will hear. (Cries again of "Put him out;" 
calls to order ; confusion for a time.) 

The President — If anybody hisses here, re- 
member that every one has his own peculiar 
way of expressing himself, and as some birds 
only understand hissing, they must hiss. (Ap- 
plause.) 

Mr. O'Conor — Gentlemen, there is an animal 
upon this earth that has no faculty of making 
its sentiments known in any other way than 
by a hiss. I am for equal rights. (Three cheers 
were 'here given for Mr. O'Conor, three for 
Gov. Wise, and three groans for John Brown.) 
I beg of you, gentlemen, all of you who are of 
my mind at least, to preserve silence, and leave 
the hissmg animal in the full enjoyment of his 
natural privileges. (Cries of " Good, good," 
laughter and applause.) The first of our race 
that offended was taught to do so by that hiss- 
ing animal. (Laughter and applause.) The 
first human society that was ever broken up, 
through sin and discord, had its happy union 
dissolved by the entrance of that animal. (Ap- 
plause.) Therefore, it is his privilege to hiss. 
Let him hiss on. (Cries of " Good, good," 
laughter and applause.) Gentlemen, I will not 
detain you much longer. (Cries of " Go on, go 
on.") I maintain that negro slavery is not un- 
just — (a voice — "No, sir," applause,) that it is 
benig-n in its influences upon the white man 



and upon the black. (Voices — " That's so, that's 
so," applause.) T maintain that it is ordained 
by nature ; that it is a necessity of both races ; 
that in climates where the black race can live 
and prosper, nature herself enjoins' correlative 
duties on the black man and on the white 
which cannot be performed except by the pre- 
servation, and, if the hissing gentleman please, 
the perpetuation of negro slavery. 

I am fortified in this opinion by the highest 
tribunal in our country, that venerable expo- 
nent of our institutions, and of the principles of 
justice — the Supreme Court of the United 
States. That court has held, on this subject, 
what wise men will ever pronounce to be sound 
and just doctrine./ There are some principles 
well known, well understood, universally recog- 
nized and universally acknowledged among 
men, that are not to be found written in con- 
stitutions or in laws. The people of the United 
States, at the formation of our Government, 
were, as they still are, in some sense, peculiar 
and radically distinguishable from other nations. 
We were white men, of — what is commonly 
called, by way of distinction — the Caucasian 
race. We were a monogamous people; that 
♦is to say, we were not Mohammedans, or fol- 
lowers of Joe Smith — with half a dozen wives 
apiece. (Laughter.) It was a fundamental prin- 
ciple of our civilization that no State could ex- 
ist or be tolerated in this Union which should 
not, in that respect, resemble all the other 
States of the Union. Some other distinctive 
features might be stated which serve to mark 
us as a people distinct from others, and incapable 
of associating on terms of perfect political 
equality or social equality, as friends and fellow- 
citizens, with some kinds of people that are to 
be found upon the face of the earth. As a 
white nation, we made our Constitution and our 
laws, vesting aU political rights in that race. 
\ They, and they alone, constituted, in every po- 
llitical sense, the American people. (Applause.) 
As to the negro, why, we allowed him to live 
under the shadow and protection of our laws. 
We gave him, as we were bound to give him, 
protection against wrong and outrage ; but we 
denied to him political rights, or the power to 
govern. We left him, for so long a period as 
the community in which he dwelt should so 
order, in the condition of a bondman. (Ap- 
plause.) Now, gentleman, to that condition 
the negro is assigned by nature. (Cries of 
" Bravo," and " That's so," and applause.) Ex- 
perience shows that his race cannot prosper- 
that they become extinct in any cold, or in any 
very temperate chme ; but in the warm, the ex- 
tremely warm regions, his race can be perpetu- 
ated, and with proper guardianship, may pros- 
per. He has ample strength, and is competent 
to labor, but nature denies to him either the 
intellect to govern or the willingness to work, 
(Applause.) Both were denied him. That 
same power which deprived him of the will to 
labor, gave him in our country, as a recom- 
pense, a master to coerce that duty, and con- 
vert him into a useful and valuable servant. 



12 



(Applause.) I maintain that it is not injustice 
to leave the negro in the condition in which 
nature placed him, and for which alone he is 
adapted. Fitted only for a state of pupilage 
our slave system gives him a master to govern 
him and to supply his deficiencies : in this 
there is no injustice. Neither is it unjust in 
the master to compel him to labor, and thereby 
afford to that master a just compensation in 
return for the care and talent employed in gov- 
erning him. In this way alofie is the negro 
enabled to render himself useful to himself and 
to the society in which he is placed. 

These are the principles, gentlemen, which 
the extreme measures of abolitionism compel 
us to enforce. This is the ground that we must 
take, or abandon our cherished Union, We 
must no longer favor pohtical leaders who talk 
about negro slavery being an evil ; nor must 
we advance the indefensible doctrine that ne- 
gro slavery is a thing which, although perni- 
cious, is to be tolerated merely because we have 
made a bargain to tolerate it. We must turn 
away from the teachings of fanaticism. We 
must look at negro slavery as it is, remember- 
ing that the voice of inspiration, as found in 
the sacred volume, nowhere condemns the 
bondage of those who are fit only for bondage. 
Yielding to the clear decree of nature, and the 
dictates of sound philosophy, we must pro- 
nounce that institution just, benign, lawful and 
proper. The Constitution estabUshed by the 
fathers of our Republic, which recognized it, 
must be maintained. And that both may stand 
together, we must maintain that neither the 
institution itself, nor the Constitution which up- 
holds it, is wicked or unjust ; but that each is 
sound and wise, and entitled to our fullest sup- 
port. 

We must visit with our execration any man 
claiming our suffrages, who objects to enforc- 
ing, with entire good faith, the provisions of 
the Constitution in favor of negro slavery, or 
who seeks, by any indirection, to withhold its 
protection from the South, or to get away from 
its obligations upon the North. Let us hence- 
forth support no man for public office whose 
speech or action tends to induce assaults upon 
the territory of our Southern neighbors, or to 
generate insurrection within their borders. 
(Loud applause.) These are the principles up- 
on which we must act. This is what we must 
say to our brethren of the South. If we have 
sent men into Congress who are false to these 
views, and are seeking to violate the compact 
which binds us together, we must ask to be 
forgiven until we have another chance to mani- 
fest our will at the ballot-boxes. We must 
tell them that these men shall be consigned to 
privacy (applause), and that true men, men 
faithful to the Constitution, men loving all por- 
tions of the country alike^ shall be elected in 
their stead. And, gentlemen, we must do more 
than promise this — we must perform it. (Loud 
applause, followed by three cheers for Mr. 
O'Conor, and a tiger.) But a word more, gen- 
tlemen, and I have done. (Cries of " Qo on.") 



I have no doubt at all that what I have said to 
you this evening will be greatly misrepresented. 
It is very certain that I have not had- time 
enough properly to enlarge upon and fully to 
explain the interesting topics on which I have 
ventured to express myself thus boldly and 
distinctly, taking upon myself the consequences, 
be they what they may. (Applause.) But I 
will say a few words by way of explanation. 
I have maintained the justice of slavery ; I have 
maintained it, because I hold that the negro is 
decreed by nature to a state of pupilage under 
the dominion of the wiser white man, in every 
clime where God and nature meant the negro 
should live at all. (Applause.) I say a state 
of pupilage ; and, that I may be rightly under- 
stood, I say that it is the duty of the white 
man to treat him kindly ; that it is the interest 
of the white man to treat him kindly. (Ap- 
plause.) And further, it is my belief that if the 
white man, in the States where slavery exists, 
is not interfered with by the fanatics who are 
now creating these disturbances, whatever laws, 
whatever improvements, whatever variations in 
the conduct of society are necessary for the pur- 
pose of enforcing in every instance the dictates 
of interest and humanity, as between the white 
man and the black, will be faithfully and fairly 
carried out in the progress of that improve- 
ment in all these things in which we are en- 
gaged. It is not pretended that the master 
has a right to slay his slave ; it is not pretended 
that he has a right to be guilty of harshness 
and inhumanity to his slave. The laws of all 
the Southern States forbid that : we have not 
the right here at the North to be guilty of 
cruelty toward a horse. It is an indictable of- 
fence to commit such cruelty. The same laws 
exist in the South, and if there is any failure 
in enforcing them to the fuUest extent, it is 
due to this external force, which is pressing 
upon the Southern States, and compels them 
to abstain perhaps from many acts beneficent 
toward the negro which otherwise would be 
performed. (Applause.) In truth, in fact, in 
deed, the white man in the slaveholding States 
has no more authority by the law of the land 
over his slave than our laws allows to a father 
over his minor children. He can no more vio- 
late humanity with respect to them, than a fa- 
ther in any of the free States of this Union 
can exercise acts violative of humanity toward 
his own son under the age of twenty-one. 
So far as the law is concerned, you own your 
boys, and have a right to their services until 
they are twenty-one. You can make them 
work for you ; you have the right to hire out 
their services and take tlieir earnings; you 
have the right to chastise them with judgment 
and reason if they violate your commands; 
and they are entirely without political rights. 
Not one of them at the age of twenty years 
and eleven months even can go to the polls and 
give a vote. Therefore, gentlemen, before the 
law, there is but one difference between the 
free white man of twenty years of age in the 
Northern States, and the negro bondman in 



13 



the Southern States. The white man is to be 
e'mancipated at twenty-one, because his God- 
given intellect entitles him to emancipation and 
fits him for the duties to devolve upon him. 
The negro, to be sure, is a bondman for hfe. 
He may be sold from one master to another, 
but where is the ill in that ? — one may be as 
good as another. If there be laws with respect 
to the mode of sale, which by separating man 
and wife do occasionally lead to that which 
shocks humanity, and may be said to violate 
all propriety and all conscience — if such things 
are done, let the South alone and they will cor- 
rect the evil. Let our brethren of the South 
take care of their own domestic institutions 
and they wiU do it. (Applause.) They will 
so govern themselves as to suppress acts of this 
description, if they are occasionally committed, 
as perhaps they are, and we must all admit that 
they are contrary to just conceptions of right 
and humanity. I have never yet heard of a 
nation conquered from evil practices, brought 
to the light of civihzation, brought to the light 
of religion or the knowledge of the Gospel by 
the bayonet, by the penal laws, or by external 
persecutions of any kind. It is not by decla- 
mation and outcry against a people from those 
abroad and outside of their territory that you 
can improve their manners or their morals in 
any respect. No ; if, standing outside of their 
territory, you attack the errors of a people, you 
make them cling to their faults. From a sen- 
timent somewhat excusable — somewhat akin 
to self-respect and patriotism — they will resist 



their nation's enemy. Let our brethren of the 
South alone, gentlemen, and if there be any 
errors of this kind, they will correct them. 

There is but one way in which you can thus 
leave them to. the guidance of their own judg- 
ment — by which you can retain them in this 
Union as our brethren, and perpetuate this 
glorious Union; and that is, by resolving — 
without reference to the political party or fac- 
tion to which any one of you may belong, 
without reference to the name, pohtical or 
otherwise, which you may please to bear — re- 
solving that the man, be he who he may, who 
advocates the doctrine that negro slavery is 
unjust, and ought to be assailed or legislated 
against, or who agitates the subject of extin- 
guishing negro slavery in any of its forms as a 
pohtical hobby, that that man shall be denied 
your suffrages, and not only denied your suf- 
frages, but that you wiU select from the ranks 
of the opposite party, or your own, if neces- 
sary, the man you hke least, who entertains 
opposite sentiments, but through whose instru- 
mentality you rnay be enabled to defeat his 
election, and to secure in the councils of the 
nation men who are true to the Constitution, 
who are lovers of the Union — men who can- 
not be induced by considerations of imaginary 
benevolence for a people who reaUy do not 
desire their aid, to sacrifice or to jeopard in any 
degree the blessings we enjoy under this Union. 
May it be perpetual. 

Great and continued cheering.) 



14 



TETE KEAL QUESTION STATED, 



LETTER FROM CHARLES O'CONOR TO A COMMITTEE OF MERCHANTS. 



Nkw York, Dec. 20, 1859. 

Chas. O'Conor, Esq. : The undersigned, being desirous of 
circulating as widely as possible, both at the North and at the 
South, the proceedings of the Union Meeting held at the Aca- 
demy of Music last evening, intend publishing in pamphlet 
form, for distribution, a correct copy of the same. 

Will you be so kind as to inform us whether this step meets 
your approval ; and if so, furnish us with a corrected report 
of your speech delivered by you on that occasion. Yours 
respectfully, 

LEITCH, BURNET & CO., 
GEO. W. & JEHIAL READ, 
BRUFF, BROTHER & SEAVER, 
C. B. HATCH & CO., 
DAVIS, NOBLE & CO., 

(Formerly Furman, Davis & Co.,) 
WESSON & COX, 
CRONIN. HURXTHAL & SEARS, 
ATWATER, MULFORD & CO. 

Gentlemen : The measure you propose meets 
my entire approval. 

I have long thought that our disputes con- 
cerning negro slavery would soon terminate, 
if the pubhc mind could be drawn to the true 
issue, and steadily fixed upon it. To eflfect this 
object was the sole aim of- my address. 

Though its ministers can never permit the 
law of the land to be questioned by private 
judgment, there is, nevertheless, such a thing 
as natural justice. Natural justice has the Di- 
vine sanction ; and it is impossible that any 
human law wliich conflicts with it should long 
endure. 

Where mental enhghtenment abounds, 
where morahty is professed by all, where the 
mind is free, speech is free, and the press is 
free, is it impossible, in the nature of things, 
that a law which is admitted to conflict with 
natural justice-, and with Grod's own mandate, 
should long endure ? 

You all will admit that, within certain limits, 
at least, our Constitution does contain positive 
guarantees for the preservation of negro slavery 
in the old States through all time, unless the 
local legislatures shall think , fit to abolish it. 
And consequently, if negro slavery, however 
humanely administered or judiciously regulated, 
be an institution which conflicts with natural 
justice and with Grod's law, surely the most 
vehement and extreme admirers of John 
Brown's sentiments are right; and their de- 
nunciations against the Constitution, and 
against the most hallowed names connected 
with it, are perfectly justifiable. 

The friends of truth — the patriotic Ameri- 
cans who would sustain their country's honor 
against foreign rivalry, and defend their coun- 



try's interests against all assailants, err greatly 
when they contend with these men on any 
point but one. Their general principles can- 
not be refuted ; their logic is irresistible ; the 
error, if any there be, is in their premises. 
They assert that negro slavery is unjust. This, 
and this alone, of all they say, is capable of 
being fairly argued against. 

If this proposition cannot be refuted, our 
Union cannot endure, and it ought not to en- 
dure. 

Our negro bondmen can neither be exter- 
minated nor transported to Afi^ica. They are 
too numerous for either process, and either, if 
practicable, would involve a violation of hu- 
manity. If they were emancipated, they 
would relapse into barbarism, or a set of negro 
States would arise in our midst, possessing po- 
litical equality, and entitled to social equality. 
The division of parties would soon make the 
negro members a powerful body in Congress — 
would place some of them in high political 
stations, and occasionally let one into the Ex- 
ecutive chair. 

It is in vain to say that this could be en- 
dured ; it is simply impossible. 

What then remains to be discussed ? < 

The negro race is upon us. With a Consti- 
tution which held them in bondage, our Fede- 
ral Union might be preserved ; but if so hold- 
ing them in bondage be a thing forbidden by 
Grod and Nature, we cannot lawfully so hold 
them, and the Union must perish. 

This is the inevitable result of that conflict 
which has now reached its chmax. 

Among us at the North, the sole question 
for reflection, study, and friendly interchange 
of thought should be— Is negro slavery unjust ? 
The rational and dispassionate inquirer will 
find no difficulty in arriving at my conclusion. 
It is fit and proper ; it is, in its ovm nature, 
as an institution, beneficial to both races ; and 
the eflfect of this assertion is not diminished by 
our admitting that many faults are practised 
under it. Is not such the fact in respect to all - 
human laws and institutions ? 

I am, gentlemen, with great respect, yours 
truly, 

CHARLES O'CONOR. 



To Messrs. Leitch, Burnet & Co. ; George W. & Jehial Read; 
Brufif, Brother & Seaver; C. B. Hatch & Co. ; Davis, Noble <t 
Co. ; Wesson & Cox ; Cronin, Hurxthal & Sears ; Atwater, 
Mulford & Co. 



- 15 



COKFLICTING AUTHORITIES. 



la 



At tibe Union-saving meeting in New York 
city, wherein sundry gentlemen distinguished 
themselves no less for their lofty patriotism in 
preventing the dissolution of the Union than 
for their generous abuse of the Republican 
arty in general, and Gov. Seward in particu- 
ar, the speech of Mr. 0' Conor was the gem of 
the occasion. The clerical patriotism and hap- 
py forgetfulness of the reverend theologian; 
the stately and heavy grandeur of the ex-Gro- 
vernor; the splendid hits and magnificent, 
periods of the chameleon Thayer — all pale 
before the effort of this distinguished orator of 
the legal profession. It is, however, deserving 
of special notice, not on account of its novelty, 
its logic, or its moral tone, but for the simple 
fact that the leading Democratic journals have 
pronounced it a bold and manly effort, and as- 
sumed it as the key-note of Democratic con- 
servatism. As a lawyer, Mr. O'Conor, in giv- 
ing utterance to his extreme Pro-Slavery 
sentiments, so utterly abhorrent to the intelh- 
gence and moral sense of the ISTorth, should at 
least have attempted to fortify his doctrine by 
a show of authority or logical argument. 

We do not, however, deny the right of this 
distinguished advocate, in presenting the case 
of his Southern clients and of the Northern 
Democracy, to take his own course ; but we 
propose to call him and several other witnesses, 
whom he himself wiU recognize -as men of some 
eminence as lawyers, jurists, statesmen, philo- 
sophers, and theologians, and present their tes- 
timony to the American people, in order that 
they may come to a right conclusion as to the 
success of Mr. Charles O'Conor's defense of 
Slavery, and its Democratic indorsement. And 
first, consider an extract from Mr. O'Conor's 
speech upon this subject of Slavery : 

" It (Negro Slavery) is not only not unjust, it is just, wise and 
beneficent."— 6'Aanes 0' Conor. 

This ipse dixit closes the case on the part of 

the Democracy. Now, on the other hand : 

" Slavery is inconsistent with the genius of Republicanism- 
it lessens the sense of the equal rights of mankind, and habitu- 
ates us to tyranny and oppression."— Zw^/ter Ifartin, ofMd. 

' It (Slavery) is so odious that nothing can be sufiBcient to 
support it but positive law."— Zor(i Mansfield. 

' It is injustice to permit slavery to remain for a single 
hour."— William Pitt. 

"Slavery is contrary to the fundamental law of all socie- 
ties."— Jz<m^S5iiie'W. 

" Slavery, in all its forms, in all its degrees, is a violation of 
divme law, and a degradation of human nature."— ^mso?. 

'Those are men-stealers who abduct, keep, sell or buy slaves 
or TYQem^n.^—Grotiv^. 

"Slavery is detrimental to virtue and industry."— 5ea«ze, 

' Slavery is a system of outrage and robberv."— /Socrates. 
Slavery IS a system of the most complete injustice."— PZafe. 

• While men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor 
blood, they will reject with indignation the wild and guilty 
phantasy that man can hold property in ms.n."~£rouffham,. 

"Slavery is a state so improper, so degrading, so ruinous to 
the feelings and capacities of human nature, that it ought not 
to be suffered to exist."— ^wr^e. 

" No man is by nature the property of another."— i>y. Johti- 
6on. 



" A system (Slavery) which is not only opposed to all the 
principles of morality, but as it appears to me, is pregnant 
with appalling and inevitable danger to the Republic."— ^aroTi 
IlumooldV' 

" Every man lias a property in his own person— this nobody 
has a right to but himself."— Zoc^e. 

"It perverts human reason, and induces men endowed with 
logical powers to maintain that Slavery is sanctioned by the 
Christian religion."— Jb/m Q. Adams. 

"I never would consent and never have consented that 
there should be one foot of slavery territory beyond what the 
old thirteen States had at theformationof the Union. Never, 
never."— Daniel Webster. 

"It (Slavery) ought not to be introduced nor permitted in 
any of the new States."— j/oAti Jay. 

" Natural liberty is the gift, of the beneficent Creator of the 
whole human ra.ce."— Alex Hamilton, 

"Slavery is an atrocious debasement of human nature."— 
I'ra7ikUn, 

"It (Slavery) impairs our strength as a community, and poi- 
sons our morals at the fountain hea.d."—Judffe Gaston ojFJUf. 
Carolina. 

" The evils of this system (Slavery) cannot be enumerated." 
George W. Summers, of Va. 

" So long; as God allows the vital current to flow through my 
veins, I will never, never, never, byword or thought, by mind 
or will, aid in submitting one rood of free territory to the ever- 
lasting cm-se of Human Bondage."— ZTeTiri/ Clay. 

"Sir, I envy neither the heart nor the head of that man from 
the North who rises here (in Congress) to defend Slavery from 
principle."— t/bA?i Randolph. 

" We have found that this evil (Slavery) has preyed upon the 
very vitals of the Union, and has beea prejudicial to all the 
States in which it has existed."— James Monroe. 

"The abolition of domestic Slavery is the greatest object of 
desire in these Colonies, where it wasr unhappily introduced in 
their infant stale."— Thomas Jefferson. 

"I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes 
more sincerely than I do to see a jilan adopted for the aboli- 
tion of it (Slavery).— (reo. Washington. 

For Mr. O'Conor's special benefit, we intro- 
duce two other witnesses : 

" Not only does the Christian religjon, but nature herself cry 
out against the state of Slavery."— Po2?&Zeo A. 

"We further reprobate, by our Apostolic authority, all the 
above offences (traffic in slaves and holding them in slavei-y) 
as utterly unworthy of the Christian nsjone.—Pope Gregory 

We simply add that the Eoman Catholic 
Church, the Lutheran, the Greek, the Nesto- 
rian, the Church of England, the Presbyterian 
Church of Scotland, the Eeformed Churches 
of France^ Switzerland, and Holland ; indeed, 
the whole Protestant Church — aU, except a few 
churches in the Southern States — now, and at 
all times, have deplored and denounced human 
bondage, as a social, moral and political evil — • . 
either by their creeds, laws, or constitutions, 
or by the authoritative opinions of their most 
eminent divines. And yet, Mr. Charles 0' Co- 
nor, as the representative man of the vast mul- 
titude of the Union-saving Democracy — stand- 
ing in the great commercial emporium of this' 
great Eepublic — has the effrontery to proclaim 
(and is applauded for so proclaiming) that the 
system of Negro Slavery, which the United 
voices of the great and the good, in aU ages, 
and which the advancing civiHzation of the 
whole of Christendom unite in denouncing as 
abhorrent to aU law, human and divine, "is 
not only not unjust, but is just, wise and be- 
neficent." And the Pro-slavery Democracy 
not only does not condemn the utterance of 
this abominable sentiment, but sustains and 
applauds it I 



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^xmhm md th Wimm. 



SPEECii 



OP 



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IN THE 



SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, 



IN VINDXCATION OF 



FREEDOM AND THE UNION, 



WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29, I860. 



PILEASE CIRCULATE. 



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.^Address, WEED, DAWSON & CO., 59 State Street, Albany, 

Albany, February, 1860, 



SPEECH 

OP 




ILLIAM E SEWARD 



IN THE 



SENATE OF THE IMTED STATES, 



IN YINDICATION OF 



FREEDOM AND THE UNIOK 



IN SEMTE, WEDNESDAY, FEB. 29, 1860. 



Mr. President — The arlraission of Kansas 
into ili-e Union, without farther dcKiy, seems to 
5J1C equallj' necessary , just and wise. In recorded 
debates I have already anticipated the arguments 
for this conclusion. 

In comins forward amonjj the political astrolo- 
eers, it shall be an error of judgment, and not of 
disposition, if my. interpretation of the feverish 
dreams which are disturbing the country shall 
teml to foment, rather than to allny, the national 
excitement. I shall say nothing unnecessarily 
of persons, because, in our system, the public 
W'elfare and happiness depend chiefly on institu- 
tions, and very little on men. I shall allude but 
briefly to incidental topics, because ihey are 
ephemeral, and, because, even in the midst of 
appeals to passion and prejudice, it is always safe 
to submit solid truth to the deliberate considera- 
tion of all lionest and enlishtened people. 

It will be an overflcnving source of shame, as 
well as of sorrow, if we, thirty inillions — Euro- 
penns by extraction, Americans by birth or dis- 
cipline, and Christians in faith, and meaning to 
be such in practice — cannot so combine prudence 
with humanity, in our conduct concerning the 
one disturbing subject of Slavery, as not only to 
preserve our unequaled institutions of Freedom, 
but also to enjoy their benefits with contentment 
and liarmony. 

Wherever a guiltless slave exists, be he Cau- 
casian, American, MaJay or African, he is the 
subject of two distinct and opposite ideas — one 
that he is wrongly, tlie other tiiat he is rightly, a 
slave. The balance of numbers, on either siile, 
however great, never completely exiinsuishes 
this (iiffereiice of opinion, for there aie always 
some defenders of Slavery outside, even if there 
are none inside a Fiee State, while, also, there 
are always outside, if there are not inside of 
every Slave State, many who assert with Mikon, 
that *' no man who knows aught can be so stupid 



to deny that all men naturally were bom free^ 
being the image and resemblance of God himself^ 
and were by privilege above all the creatureSy 
born to command and not to obey," It often, 
perhaps generally, happens, however, that in con- 
sidering the subject of Slavery, society seems to 
overlook the natural right or personal interest of 
the slave himself and to act exclusively for the 
welfare of the citizen. But this fact does not 
materially affect ultimate results, for the element- 
ary ques'.ion of the rightfulness or wrongfulness 
of Slavery inheres in every form that discussion 
concerning it assumes. What is just to one class 
of men can never be injurious to any other; and 
what is unjust to any condition of persons in a 
State, is necessarily injurious in some degree ta 
the whole community. An economical question 
early arises out of the subject of Slavery — labor 
either of freemen or of slaves is the cardinal ne- 
cessity of society. Some States choose the one 
kind, some the other. Hence two municipal sys- 
tems widely different arise. The Slave State 
strikes down and aflfiects to extinguish the person- 
ality of the laboier, not only as a member of the 
political body, but as a parent, husband,, child, 
neighbor or friend. He thus becomes, in a poli- 
tical view, merely property without moral capa- 
city, and without domestic, moral and social rela- 
tions, duties, rights and reijiedies — a chattel, an 
object of bargain, sale, gift, inheritance, or thetX. 
His earnings are compensated and his wrongs 
atotied, not to himself, but to his ownei'. The 
State protects not the slave as a man, but the 
capital of another man, which he represents. On 
the other hand, the State which rejects Slavery 
encourages, and animates and invigorates the 
laborei' by maintaining and developing his i.atural 
personality in all the rights and faculties of man- 
iidod, and generally with the ])rivileges of citizen- 
ship. In the one ease capital invested in slaves 
becomes a great political force, while in the other 



labor thus elevated and enfranchised, becomes 
the domiiiatin<T political power. It thus happens 
tliat we may, for convenience sake, and not inac- 
curately, call Slave States capital States, and 
Free Stales labor States. 

So soon as a State feels the impulses of com- 
merce, or enterprise, or ambition, its citizens be- 
gin to study the effects cf these systems of capital 
and labor respectively on its intelligence, its 
virtue, its tranquillity, its integrity or unity, its 
defense, its prosperity, its liberty, its happiness, 
its aggrandizement, and its fame. In other 
■words, the question arises, vrhether Slavery is a 
moral, social and political sjood, or a social, 
moral and political evil. This is the Slavery 
question at home. But there is a mutual bond 
■of amity aiid brotherhood between man and man 
throujrhout the world. Nations examine freely 
the political systems of each oiher, and of all 
preceding times, and accordingly as they ap- 
prove or disapprove of the two systems of capi- 
tal and labor respectively, they sanction and 
prosecute, or condemn and prohibit commerce in 
men. Thus, in one way or in another, the 
Slavery question which so many among us, who 
are more willing to rule than ))atient in studying 
the conditions of society, think is a merely acci- 
dental or uimeceysary question that might and 
ought to be settled and dismissed at once, is, on 
the coiitrary, a world-wide and enduring subject 
of political consideration and civil administra- 
tion. Men, states, and nations entertain it, Tiot 
voluntarily, but because the progress of society 
continually brings it into their way. They di- 
vide upon ii, not perversely, but because owing 
to ditterences of constitution, condition or cir- 
cumstances, they cannot asfree. 

The fathers of the Republic encountered it. 
They even adjusted it so that it might have given 
us much less than our present disquiet, had not 
ciicumstances afterwards occurred which they, 
wise as they were, had not clearly foreseen. Al- 
though they had inherited, yet they generally 
condemned the practice of Slavery, and hoped 
for its discontinuance. They expressed this 
When they asserted in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, as a fundamental principle of Ameri- 
can society, that all men are created equal, and 
have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness. Each State, however, re- 
served to itself exclusive political power over 
the subject of Slavery, withiu its own borders. 
Nevertheless, it unavoidably presented itself in 
their consultations on a bond of Federal Union. 
The new Government was to be a representative 
one. Slaves were capital in some States, in 
others capital had no investments in labor. — 
Should those slaves be represented as capital or 
as pers(^ns, taxed as capital or as persons, or 
should they not be represented or taxed at all ? 
The fathers disagreed, debated long, and com- 
promised at last. Each State, they determined, 
shall have two Senators iu Congress. Three- 
fifths of the slaves shall be elsewliere represent- 
ed and be taxed as persons. What should be 
done if the slave escape into a labor State? 
Should that State confess him to be a chattel, 
and restore him as such; or might it regard him 
as a person, and harbor and protect Inm as a 
man? They compromised again, and decided 
lh;itno person held to labor or service in one 
State by the laws thereof, escaping into another, 
shall by any law or regulation of" that State, be 



discharged from such labor or service, but shall 
be delivered up on claim, to the person to whom 
such labor or service shall be due. 

Free laborers would immigrate, and slaves 
might be imj)orted into the States. The fathers 
agreed that Congress may establish uniform laws 
of naturalization, and it might prohibit the im- 
portation of persons after 1808. Communities in 
the Southwest, detached from the Soutliern 
States, were growing up in the practice of Slav- 
ery, to be called States. New States would soon 
grow up in the Northwest, while as yet capital 
stood aloof, and labor had not lifted the ax to 
begin there its endless but beneficent task. The 
fathers authorized Congress to make all needful 
rules and regulations concerning the management 
and disposition of the public lands and to admit 
new States. So the Constitution, while it does 
not disturb or affect the system of capital in 
slaves, existing in any State under its own laws, 
does, at the san:e t,ime, recognize every human 
being, when within any exclusive sphere of Fede- 
ral jurisdiction, not as capital but as a person. 

What was the action of the fathers in Con- 
gress ? They admitted the new States of the 
Sou^hwe.'-t as ca])ital States, because it was prac- 
tically impossible to do otherwise, and by the 
ordinance of 1787, confirmed in 1789, they pro- 
vided for the organization and admission of only 
labor States, in the Northwest. They directed 
fugitives from justice to be restored not as chat- 
tels, but as persons. They awarded naturaliza- 
tion to immigrant free laborers, and they prohi- 
bited the ti-ade in African labor. This disposition 
of the whole subject was in harmony with the 
condition of society, and, in the main, Avith th(; 
spirit of the age. The seven Northern States 
contentedly became labor States by their own 
acts. The six other States, with equal tranquil- 
lity and by their own determination remained 
capital States. 

The circumstances which the fathers did not 
clearly foresee were two, namely : the reinvigo- 
ration of Slavery con.sequent on the increased 
consumption of cotton, and the extension of the 
national domain across the Mississippi, and these 
occurred before 1820. The State of Louisiana, 
formed on a slaveholding French settlement, 
within the newly acquired Louisiana Territory, 
had then already been admitted into the Union. 
There yet remained, however, a vast lesion 
which incliuled Arkansas and Missouri, together 
with the then unoccupied and even unnamed 
Kansas and Nebraska. Arkansas, a slavehold- 
ing community, was nearly ready to apply, and 
Missouri, another such Territory, was actually 
applying for admission into the Federal Union, 
The existing capital States seconded these ap- 
plications, and claimed that the whole Louisi- 
anian Teiritory was rightfully open to Slavery, 
and to the organization of future Slave States. 
Tlie labor States maintained that Congress had 
supreme legislative power within tiie donsain, 
a?\d could and ought to exclude Slavery there. 
The question thus oldened was one which related 
not at all to Slavery in the existing capital 
States. It was i)urely and simply a national 
question whether the C(mimon interest of the 
whole Republic required that Arkansas, Mis- 
souri, Kansas, and Nebraska, should become 
capital States, with all the evils and dangers of 
Slavery, or ho labor States with all the security, 
benefits and blessings of freedom. On the de- 



cision was suspended the questioii. as was 
thought, whether uU,unately the interior of this 
rew continent shoukl be an asyiuni for the op- 
pressed and the exile, coming year aftei' year 
and nge after age, voluntarily from every other 
civilized land, as well as for the children of mis- 
fortune in our own, or whether, through the re- 
newal of the African slave trade, those niafinifi- 
cent and luxuriant regions should be sunendered 
to the control of capital, wringing out the fruit 
"f the earth through the impoverishiiig toil of 
nogro slaves. That question of 1820 was iden- 
tically the question of 1860, so far as principle, 
and even the field of lis application was con- 
cerned. Every element of the controversy now 
present entered it then; the rightfulness or the 
Avrongfulness of Slavery ; its effects, present and 
future; the Constitutional authority of Congress; 
the claims of the States, and of iheir citizens; 
the natui-e of the Federal Union, whether it is a 
compact between the States, or an independent 
Government; the springs of its powers, and the 
ligat.Qies upon their exercise. All these were dis- 
cussed with zeal and ability, which have never 
heen sur[)assed. History tells us, I know not how 
truly, that the Union reeled under the vehe- 
mence of that great debate. Patriotism took 
counsel frcmi prudence, and enfoiced a settle- 
ment which has proved to be not a final one; 
and which, as is now seen, practically left o})cn 
all the great political issues wliich weie involved. 
Missouri and Arkansas were admitted as capital 
Suites, M'hile labor obtained, as a reservation, 
the abridged yet compreliensive field of Kansas 
and Nebraska. 

Now, when the present conditions of the vari- 
ous parts of the Louisianian Territory are ob- 
snrved, and we see that capital retains undis- 
puted i)OS.session of what it then obtained, while 
labor is convulsing the country with so hard and 
so prolonged a struggle to regain the lost equiva- 
lent which was then guaranteed to it under cir- 
cumstances of so great solemnity, we may well 
desire not to be undeceived if the Missouri Com- 
promise was indeed unnecessarily accepted by 
tlie Free States influenced by exaggerations of 
tlie dangers of Disunion. The Missouri debate 
disclosed truths of great moment for ulterior 
use : 

First : That it is easy to combine the capital 
States in defense of even external interests, 
while it is hard to unite the labor States in a 
common policy. 

Second : That the labor States have a natural 
loyalty to the Union, while the capital States 
have a natural facility for alarming that loyalty 
by threatening Disunion, 

Thiid : That the capital States do not practi- 
cally distinguish between legitimate and consti- 
tutional resistance to the extension of Slavery in 
the common Territories of the Union, and un- 
constitutional aggression against Slavery estab- 
lished by local laws in the capital States. 

The early political parties were organized 
without reference to Slaveiy. But since 1820, 
Euro]i)ean questions have left us practically un- 
concerned. There has been a great increase of 
invention, mining, manufacture, and cultivation. 
Steam on land and on water has quickened com- 
merce. The p. ess and the telegraph have attained 
prodigious activity, and the social intercourse be- 
tween the States and their citizens has been im- 
measuriibly increased ; and consequently, their 



mutual relations afiecting Slavery have been for 
many years, subjects of earnest and often excited 
discussion. It is in my way only to show liovv 
such disputes have operated on the course of po- 
litical events — not to re-open them for aigument 
here. There was a slave insurrection in Virginia. 
Virginia and Kentucky debated, and, to the great 
sorrow of the Free States, rejected the system 
of voluntary labor. The Colonization Society 
was established with much favor in the capital 
States. Emancipation Societies arose iti the 
Free Slates. South Carolina instituted pioceed- 
ings to nullify obnoxious Federal revenue laAVS. 
The capital States complained of Courts and 
Legislatures in the labor States, for interpreting 
the constitutional provision for the surrender of 
fugitives from service so as to treat them as per- 
sons and not property, and they discriminated 
against colored persons of the labor States when 
they came to the capital States. They denied, 
in Congress, the right of i)etition, and embarrassed 
or denied fieedom of debate on the subject of 
Slavery. Presses, which undertook the defenso 
of the labor system in the capital States, were 
suppressed by violence; and even in the labor 
Stales, public assemblies, convened to consider 
Slavery questions, were dispersed by mobs sym- 
pathizing with the capital States. 

The Whig party, being generally an opposition 
j)arty, practised some forbearance toward the in- 
terest of labor. The Democratic party, not 
without demonstrations of dis.sent, was generally 
found sustaining the policy of capital. A dispo- 
sition toward the removal of Slavery from the 
presence of the national capitol appeared in the 
District of Columbia. Mr. Van Buren, a Demo- 
cratic President, launched a jjrospective veto 
against the anticipated measure. A Democratic 
Congress brought Texas into the Union, stipulat- 
ing practically for its future reorganization into 
four slave States. Mexico was incensed. War 
ensued. The labor States asked that the Mexi- 
can law of liberty, which covered the Territories 
brought in by the treaty of peace, might remain 
and be confirmed. The Democratic party refused. 
The Missouri debate of 1820 recurred now, un- 
der circumstances of heat and excitement, in re- 
lation to these conquests. The defenders of la- 
bor took alarm lest the number of new capital 
States might become so great as to enable that 
class of States to dictate the whole policy of the 
Grovernment ; and iu case of constitutional resist- 
ance, then to form a new slaveholding confede- 
racy around the Gulf of Mexico. By this time 
the capital States seemed to have become fixed 
in a determination that the Federal Government, 
and even the labor States, should recognise their 
slaves, though outside of the Slave States and. 
within the Territories of the United States, as 
property of which the master could not be in any 
way, or by any authority divested ; and the labor 
States, having become now more essentially 
Democratic than ever before, by the great devel- 
opment of free labor, more firmly than ever in- 
sisted on the constitutional doctrine that slaves 
voluntarily carried by their masters into the 
common Territories, or into the labor States, are 
persons, men. 

Under the auspicious influences of a Whig 
success, California and New Mexico appeared 
before Congress as labor States. The capital 
States refused to consent to their admission into 
the Union ; and again threats of Disunion carried 



6 



terror and consternation througliout the land. — 
Another compromise was made. Specific enact- 
ments admitted California as a labor State, and 
remanded New Mexico and Utah to remain Ter- 
ritories, with the right to choose Freedom or 
Slavery when ripened into States, wliile they 
gave new remedies for the recaption of fugitives 
from service, and aboUshed the open slave mar- 
ket in the District of Columbia. These new en- 
actments, collated with the existing statutes, 
namely, the Ordinance of 1787, the Missouri 
Prohibiiory law of 1820, and the articles of Tex- 
as annexation, disposed by law of the subject of 
Slavery in all the Territories of the United 
States. And so the Compromise of 1850 was 
pronounced a full, final, absolute and compre- 
hensive settlement of all existing and all possible 
disputes concerning Slavery under Federal au- 
thoriL3\ The two great parties, fearful for the 
Union, struck hands in making and presenting 
this as an adjustment, never afterwards to be 
opened, disturbed, or even questioned, and the 
people accepted it by majorities unknown be- 
fore. The new President, chosen over an illus- 
trious rival, unequivocally on the ground of 
greater ability, even if not more reliable pur- 
pose to maintain the new treaty inviolate, made 
haste to justify this expectation when Congress 
assembled. He said : 

" When the grave shall have closed over all who are 
now endeavoring to meet the obligatioas of duty, the 
year 1850 will be recurred to as a period filled with anx- 
iety and apprehension. A successful war has just ter- 
minated ; peace brought with it a great augmentation of 
territory. Disturbing questions arose bearing upon the 
•domestic institutions of a portion of the Confederacy, 
and involving the constitutional rights of the States. — 
But, notwithstanding diflferences of opinion and senti- 
ment, in relation to details and specific provisions, the 
acquiescence of distinguished citizens, whose devoiioa to 
the Union can never be doubted, lias given renewed 
vigor to our institutions, and restored a sense of security 
and repose to the public mind throughout the Conted- 
eracy. That this repose is to suffer no shock during my 
official term, if I have the power to avert it, those who 
placed me here may be assured." 

Hardly, however, had these inspiring sounds 
died away, throughout a reassured and delighted 
land, before the national repose was shocked 
Again — shocked, indeed, as it had never been, 
and smitten this time by a blow from the very 
hand tliat had just released the chords of the na- 
tional harp from their utterance oi' that exalted 
symphony of peace. 

Kansas and Nebraska, the long devoted reser- 
vation of labor and Freedom, saved in tlie agony 
of national fear in 1820, and saved again in the 
panic of 1850, were now to be opened by Con- 
gress, that the never ending course of seed tiaie 
and harvest might begin. The slave capitalists 
of Missouri, from their own well assured homes 
on the eastern banks of their noble river, looked 
down upon and coveted the fertile prairies of 
Kansas ; while a sudden terror ran through all 
the capital States, when they saw a seeming cer- 
tainty that at last a new labor State would be 
built on their western border, inevitably fraught, 
as they said, with a near or remote abolition of 
Slavery. What could be done ? Congress could 
hardly be expected to intervene directly for their 
safety so soon after the Compromise of 1850, 
The labor hive of the Free States was distant, 
the way new, unknown, and not without perils, 
3Iissouri was near and watchful, and held the 
keys of the gates of Kansas. She might seize 
Ike new and smiling Territory by surprise, if 



only Congress would remove the barrier estab- 
lished in 1820. The conjuncture was favorable. 
Clay and Webster, the distinguished citizens 
whose unquestionable devotion to the Union was 
manifested by their acquiescence in the compro- 
mise of 1850, had gone down already into their 
honored graves. The labor States had dismiss- 
ed, many of their representatives here for too 
great distrust of the efficacy of that new bond 
of peace, and had replaced them with partisan.^ 
who were only timid, but not unwilling. The 
Democratic President and Congress hesitated, 
but not long. They revised the last great com- 
promise, and found, with delighted surprise, that 
it was so far from confirming the law of freedoni 
of 1820, that, on the other hand, it exactly pro- 
vided for the abrogation of that venerated sta- 
tute ; nay, that the compromise itself actually 
killed the spirit of the Missouri law, and de- 
volved on Congress the duty of removing the life- 
less letter from the National Code, The deed was 
done. The new enactment not only repealed the 
Missouri prohibition of Slavery, but it pronounc- 
ed the people of Kansas and Nebraska perfectly 
free to establish Freedom or Slavery, and pledged 
Congress to admit them in due time as States, 
either of capital or of labor, into the Union. 
The Whig representatives of the capital States, in 
an hour of strange bewilderment, concurred ; and 
the Whig party instantly went down, never to 
rise again. Democrats seceded, and stood aloof; 
the country was again confounded ; and, amid 
the perplexities of the hour, a Republican party 
was seen gathering itself together with much 
earnestness, but with little show of organization, 
to rescue, if it were not now too late, tlie cause 
of Freedom and Labor, so unexpectedly and 
grievously imperiled in the Territories of the 
United States, 

I will not linger over the sequel. The popular 
sovereignly of Kansas proved to be the State 
sovereignty of Missouri, not only in the persons 
of the rulers, but even in the letter of an arbitrary 
and cruel code. The perfect freedom proved to 
be a hateful and intolerable bondage. From 1855 
to 1860, Kansas, sustained and encouraged only 
by the Republican party, has been engaged in 
successive and ever-varying struggles,which have 
taxed all her virtue, wisdom, moderation, ener- 
gies and resources, and often even her physical 
strength and martial courage, to save herself from 
being betrayed into the Union as a Slave State. 
Nebraska, though choosing freedom, is, through 
the direct exercises of the Executive power, over- 
riding her own will, held as a Slave Territory ; 
and New Mexico has relapsed voluntarily into the 
practice of slavery, from which she had ledeemed 
herself while she yet remained a part of the Mex- 
ican Republic. Meantime, the Democratic party, 
advancmg from the ground of Popular Sovereign- 
ty as far as that ground is from the Ordinance of 
1787, now stands on the position that both Terri- 
torial Governments and Congress are incom[)etenfc 
to legislate against slavery in the Territories, 
while iliey are not only competent, but are ob- 
liged, when it is necessary, to legislate for its pro- 
tection there. 

In this new and extreme position the Demo- 
cratic party now masks itself behind the battery 
of the Supreme Court, as if it were possibly a 
true construction of the Cor.stitution, that the 
power of deciding practically forever between 
Freedom and Slavery in a portion of the consti- 



ment far exceeding all that is yet organized, i 
should be renounced by Congress, which alone 
possesses any legislative authority, and should be 
assumed and exercised by a court which can only 
take cognizance of the great question collaterally, 
in a private action between individuals, and which 
action the Constitution will not sutler the court 
to entertain, if it involves twenty dollars of mo- 
ney, without the overruling intervention of a jury 
of tweh-e good and lawful men of the neighbor- 
hood where the litigation arises. The indepen- 
dent, ever renewed, and ever-recurring represent- 
ative Parliament, Diet, Congress, or Legislature, 
is the one chief, paramount, essential, indispen- 
sable institution in a Kepublic. Even liberty, 
guaranteed by organic law, yet if it be held by 
other tenure than the guardian care of such a 
representative popular assembly, is but preca- 
riously maintained, while Slavery, enforced by 
an irresponsible judicial tribunal, is the comple- 
test possible development of despotism. 

Mr. President, did ever the annals of any Gov- 
■erninent show a more rapid or more complete 
depai'ture from the wisdom and virtue of its 
founders 1 Did ever the Government of a great 
empire, founded on the rights of human labor, 
slide away so fast and so far, and moor itself so 
tenaciously on the basis of capital, and that capi- 
tal invested in labeling men 1 Did ever a free 
representative Legislature, invested with powers 
so great, and witli the guardianship of rights so 
important, of trusts so sacred, of interests so pre- 
cious, and of hopes at once so noble and fo com- 
prehensive, surrender and renounce them all so 
iirniecessarily, so unwisely, so fatally, and so in- 
ghn-iously"? If it be true, as every instinct of 
our nature, and every precept of political expe- 
rience teaches us, that 

" 111 fares the Jand, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay," 

then wlieie in Ireland, in Italy, in Poland, or in 
Hungary, has any ruler prepared for a generous 
and confiding peo{)le disappointments, disasters, 
and calamities equal to those which tlie Govern- 
ment of the Uniied States iiolds now suspended 
over so large a portion of the continent of North 
America 1 

Citizens of the United States, in the spirit of 
this policy, subverted the free Republic of Nica- 
ragua, and o{)ened it to slavery and the African 
slave trade, and held it in tliat condition waiting 
annexation to the United States, until its sove- 
reignty was restored by a combination of sister 
Eepublics exposed to the same danger and appi'e- 
hensive of similar subversion. Other citizens re- 
opened the foreign slave trade, in violation of our 
laws and treaties ; and, after a susi^ension of that 
shameful traffic for fifty years, savage Africans 
have been once more landed on our shores, and 
distributed, unclaimed and with impunity, among 
our plantations. 

For this policy, so far as the Government has 
sanctioned it, the Democratic party avows itself 
responsibhi. Everywhere complaint against it is 
denounced, and its opponents proscribed. When 
Kansas was writhing under the wounds of incip- 
ient, servile war, because of her resistance, the 
Democratic press deridingly said, " let her bleed." 
Official integrity has been the cause for rebuke 
and [junishment, when it resisted frauds designed 
_to promote ihe extension of slavery. Through- 
out the whole Republic there is not one known 
dissenter from that policy remaining in place, if 



within reach of the Executive arm. Nor over 
the face of the whole world is there to be found 
one representative of our country who is not an 
apologist of the extension of Slavery. 

It is in America that these things have hap- 
pened. In the nineteenth centui-y, the era of tlie 
world's greatest progress, and while all nations > 
but ourselves have been either abridging or alto- 
gether suppressing commerce in men ; at the 
very moment when the Russian serf is emanci- 
pated, and the Georgian captive, the Nubian 
prisoner, and the Abyssinian savage, are lifted 
up to freedom by the successor of Mohannned. 
The world, prepossessed in our behalf by our 
early devotion to the rights of human nature, as 
no nation ever before engaged its respect and 
sympathies, asks, in wonder and amozenient, 
what all this demoralization means 1 It has an 
excuse better than the world can imagine, better 
than we are generally conscious of ourselves — a 
virtuous excuse. We have loved not fieedora so 
much less, but the union of our country much 
more. We have been made to believe, from time 
to time, that, in a crisis, both of these precious 
institutions could not be saved together, and 
therefore we have, from time to time, surrendered 
safeguards of freedom to propitiate the loyalty 
of capital, and stay its hands from doing violence 
to the Union. The true state of the case, how- 
ever, ouglit not to be a mystery to ourselves. 
Prescience, indeed, is not given to statesmen ; 
but we are without excuse when we fail to ap- 
prehend the logic of current events. Let parties, 
or the Government choose or do what they may, 
the people of the United States do not piefer the 
wealth of the few to the liberty of the many, 
capital to labor, African slaves to white freemen, 
in the national Territories and future States. 
That question has never been distinctly recog- 
nized or acted on by them. The Re!)ublican 
party embodies the popular protest and leaction 
against a policy which has been fastened upon 
the nation by surprise, and which its reason and 
conscience, concurring with the reason and con- 
science of mankinrl, condemn. 

The clioice of the nation is now between the 
Democratic party and the Republican party. 
Its principles and policy are, therefore, justly 
and even necessarily examined. I know of only 
one policy which it has adopted or avowed, 
namely : the saving of the Territories of the 
United States, if possible, by constitutional and 
lawful means, from being homes for slavery and 
Polygamy. Who, that considers where this na- 
tion exists, of what races it is composed, in what 
age of the world it acts its part on the public 
stage, and what are its ])redominant institutions, 
customs, habits and sentiments, doubts that the 
Republican party can and will, if unwaveringly 
faithful to that policy, and just and loyal in all 
beside, carry it into triumphal success ? To 
doubt is to be uncertain whether civilization can 
improve or Christianity save mankind. 

I may, perhaps, infer, from the necessity of 
the case, that it will, in all courts and places, 
stand by the freedom of speech ar,d of the 
press, and the constitutional rights of freemen 
everywhere; that' it will favor the speedy im- 
provement of the public domain by homestead 
laws, and will encourage mining, manufactures, 
and internal commerce, with needful connections 
between the Atlantic and Pacific States — for all 
these are important interests of Freedom. For 



8 



all the rest, tli<3 national emergencies, not indi- 
vidual influences, must determine, as society 
goes on, the policy, and character of the Repub- 
lican party. Already bearing its part in legis- 
lation and in treaties, it feels the necessity of 
being practical in its care of the national health 
and life, while it leaves metaphysical specula- 
tion to those whose duty it is to cultivate the 
ennobling science of political philosophy. 

But iu the midst of these subjects, or, rather, 
beftjre fully reaching them, the liepublican party 
encounters, unexpectedly, a new and potential 
issue — one prior, and therefore paramount to all 
others, one of national life and death. Just as 
if so much had not been already conceded ; 
nay, just as if nothing at all had ever been con- 
ceded, to the interest of capital invested in men, 
we liear menaces of Disunion, louder, more dis- 
tinct, more enii)hatic than ever, with tlie condi- 
tion annexed, that they shall be executed the 
moment that a Kepublican Administration, 
though constitutionally elected, shall assume 
the Government. 

I do not certainly know that the people are 
prepared to call such an Administration to 
power. I know only, that through a succession 
of Hoods which never greatly excite, and ebbs 
which never entirely discourage me, the volume 
of Republicanism rises continually higher and 
higher. They are probably wise, whose a[)pre- 
hensiuiis admonish them that it is already strong 
enough for effect. 

Hitherto the Republican party has been con- 
tent with one self-interrogatory — how many 
votes it can casf? These threats enforce an- 
other — has it determination enough to cast 
them'? This latter question ti.uches its spirit 
and pride. I am (luite sure, however, that, as it 
has hitherto practised self-denial in so many 
other foims, it will, in this emeigency, lay aside 
all impatience of temper, together with all am- 
bition, and will consider these extraordinary de- 
clamations seriously, and with a just moderation. 
It would be a waste of words to demonstrate 
that they are unconstitutional, and equally idle 
to show that the responsibilitj^ for disunion, at- 
tempted or effected, must rest not with those 
who in the exercise of constitutional authority 
maintain the Government, but with those who 
unconstitutionally engage in the mad work of 
Bubverting it. 

What are the excuses for these menaces ? 
They resolve themselves into this : that the Re- 
publican party in the North is hostile to the 
South. But it already is proved to be a ma- 
jority in the North ; it is, therefore, practically 
the people of the North. Will it not still be 
the same North that has forborne with you so 
long and conceded to you so much ? Can you 
justly assume that affection which has been so 
eom[)lying can all at once change to hatred, in- 
tense and inexorable ? 

You say that the Republican party is a sec- 
tional one. Is the Democratic party less sec- 
tional ? Is it easier for us to bear your sectional 
sway that for you to bear ours ? Is it unrea- 
sonable that for once we should alternate ? But 
is the Republican party sectional ? Not unless 
the Democratic party is. The Republican party 
prevails iu the House of Repi-esentatives some- 
times; the Democratic party in the Senate al- 
ways. Wliich of the two is the most prescrip- 
tive ? Come, if you will, into the Free States, 



into the State of New York, anywhere from 
Lake Erie to Sag Harbor, among my neighbors 
in the Owasco Valley. Hold your conventions, 
nominate your candidates, address the people, 
submit to them, fully, earnestly, eloquently, all 
your complaints and grievances of Northern 
disloyalty, oppression, perfidy ; keep nothing- 
back, speak just as freely and as loudly there as 
you do here. You will have liospitable wel- 
comes, and appreciating audiences, with ballot- 
boxes ojien for all the votes you can win. Avi 
you less sectional than this ? Extend to us the 
same privileges, and I will engage that you will 
very soon have iu the South as many Republi- 
cans as Democrats in the North. There is, 
however, a better test of nationality than the 
accidental location of parties. Our policy of 
labor in the Territories, was not sectional in the 
first forty years of the Republic. Its nature in- 
heres. It will be national again, during the 
third forty years, and forever afterwards. It is 
not wise and beneficial for us alone, or injurious 
to you alone. Its effects are equal, and the 
same for us all. 

You accuse the Repulican party of ulterior and 
secret designs. How can a party that counts its 
votes in this land of free speech and free press 
by the hundreds of thousands, have any secret de- 
signs.? Who is the conjurer, and where are the 
hidden springs by which he can control its un- 
congregated and widely-dispersed masses, and 
direct them to objects unseen and purposes una- 
vowed ■? But what aie these hidden puposes 7 
You name only one. That one is to introduce 
negro equality among you. Suppose we had the 
power to change your social system, what war- 
rant have you for supposing that w^e should carry 
negro equality among you "? We know, and we 
will show you, if you will only give heed^ that 
what our system of labor works out, wherever it 
works out anything, is the equality of white men. 
The laborer in the Free States, no njatter how 
humble his occupation, is a wliiteman, and he is 
politically the equal of his employer. Eighteen 
of our thirty-three States are Free- Labor States. 
There they aie: — Maine, New Hampshire, Mas- 
sachus-^tis, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, 
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Mi- 
chigan, Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, 
low-a, California and Oregon. I do not array 
them in contrast with the capital States. I am 
no assailant of States. All of the States are par- 
cels of my own country — the best of them not so 
wise and great as I am sure it will hereafter be; 
the State least developed and perfect among them 
all is wiser and better than any foreign State 
I know. Is it then in any, and in which, of 
the States I have named that negro equality of- 
fends the wiiite man's pride'? throughout the 
wide world, where is the State where class and 
caste aie so utterly extinguished as they are iu 
each and evej-y one of them '? Let the European 
immigrant, who avoids the Africnn as if his skin 
exlialed contagion, answer. You find him a.1- 
ways in the State where labor is ever free. Did 
Washington, Jefferson and Henry, when they im- 
plored you to relinquish your system aiul ;ic(,'e[)t 
ihe one we have adopted, i)ropose to siidi y(Ui 
down to the level of the African, or was it their 
desire to exalt all white men to acounnon [loliti- 
cal elevation. 

But we do not seek to foi'ce, or even to intrude, 
our system ou you. We are excluded, justly. 



wisely and contentedly, from all political power 
and responsibility in your capital States. You are 
sovereigns 'on the subject of Slavery within your 
own borders, as we are on the same subject within 
CUV borders. It is well and wisely so arranged. 
Use your authority to maintain what system you 
please. We are not distrustful of the result. 
"We have wisely, as we think, exercised ours to 
protect and perfect the manhood of the members 
of the State. The whole sovereignty upon do- 
mestic concerns within t]-^e Union is divided be- 
tween us by unmistakable boundaries. You have 
your fifteen distinct parts, equally distinct. Each 
must be maintained, in order that the whole may 
be preserved. If ours shall be assailed, within 
or without, by any enemy, or for any cause, 
and we shall have need, we shall expect 
you to defend it. If yours shall be so as- 
sailed, in the emergency, no matter what the 
cause or pretext, or who the foe, we shall defend 
your sovereignty as the equivalent of our own. 
We cannot, indeed, accept your system of capital 
or its ethics. That would be to surrender and 
subvert our own, whicli we esteem to be better. 
Besides, if we could, what need for any division 
into States at all ? You are equally at liberty to 
reject our system and its ethics, and to maintain 
the superiority of your own by all the forces of 
persiiasion and argument. We must, indeed, mu- 
tually discuss both systems. All the world dis- 
cusses all systems. Especially must we discuss 
them since we have to decide as a nation which 
of the two we ouglit to engraft on the new and 
future States growing up in the great public do- 
main. Discussion, then, being unavoidable, what 
could be more wise than to conduct it with mu- 
tual toleration and in a fraternal spirit ? 

You complain that Republicans discourse too 
boldly and directly, when they express with con- 
fidence their belief that the system of labor will, 
in the end, be universally accepted by the capi- 
tal States, acting for themselves, and in conform- 
ity with tlieir own Constitutions, while they 
sanction too unreservedly books designed to ad- 
vocate emancipation. But surely you can hard- 
ly expect the Federal Government or the politi- 
cal parties of the nation to maintain a censorship 
of the Press or of debate. The theory of our 
system is, that error of opinion may in all cases 
safely be tolerated where reason is left free to 
combat it. Will it be claimed that more of 
moderation and tenderness in debate are exhi- 
bited on your side of the great argument than 
our own ? We all learned our polemics, as well 
as our principles, from a common master. We 
are sure that we do not, on our side, exceed his 
lessons and example. Thomas Jeflerson ad- 
dressed Dr. Price, an Englishman, concerning his 
treatise on emancipation in America, in this fash- 
ion ; — 

" Southward of the Chesapeake, your book -will find v^ut 
few readers c.incurritig witli it In sentiincm on the subject 
of Slavery. From the nioulh to tlie liead of the Chesa- 
peake, th ■ bulk of the people will approve it in tlieory, 
and it will find are speclal)le minority ready to adopt it 
ill pracice; a minority which, for weisrht and worth of 
character, prepotiderates against the greater number who 
have not the courage to divest their families of a property 
wliioh, liowever, keeps their consci nces unquiet. Nortli- 
ward of the Ch snpeake, you may tin.j here and" there an 
opponent to your doctrine, us you may find here and there 
a robb r or a murderer ; but in no great number." * * 
"This [Virginia I is the next Stat;- to which we may turn 
our .yes for the interesting specta'le of justice in conflict 
with avarice and oppression— a conflict where the sacred 
side is gaining daily new recruits from the influx into of- 
fice of young men, grown and growiuj; up." * * * «; 



*'Be not then, discouraged. What you have written will 
do a great deal tf good; and could you still trouble your- 
self about our welfare, no man is more able to help the la- 
boring side." 

You see, sir, that whether we go for or against 
Slavery anywhere, we must follow Southern 
guides. You may change your pilots with the 
winds or the currents ; but we, whose nativity, 
reckoned under the North Star, has rendered us 
somewhat superstitious, must be excused for 
constancy in following the guidance of thosa 
who framed the national ship and gave us the 
chart for its noble voyage. 

A profound respect and friendly regard for 
the Vice-President o-f the United States has in- 
duced me to weigh carefully the testimony ha 
has given on the subject of the hostility against 
the South imputed to the Republican party, as 
derived from the relations of the representatives 
of the two parties at this capital. He says that 
he has seen here in the representatives of the 
lower Southern States a most resolute and earn- 
est spirit of resistance to the Republican party ; 
that he perceives a sensible loss of that spirit of 
brotherhood and that feeling of loyalty, together 
with that love for a common country, which are 
at last the surest cement of the Union ; so that, 
in the present unhappy condition of affairs, he 
is almost tempted to exclaim that we are dis- 
solving week by week, and month by month.;;, 
that the threads are gradually fretting them- 
selves asunder; and a stranger might supposa 
that the Executive of the United States was the 
President of two hostile Republics, It is. not 
for me to raise a doubt upon the correctness of 
this dark picture, so far as the Soutliern gri)up.s 
upon the canvas are concerned, but I must be 
indulged in the opinion that I can pronounce as 
accurately concerning the Northern or Republi- 
can representatives here as any one. L know 
their public haunts and their private ways. We 
are not a hostile Republic, or representatives of 
one. We confer together, but only as the organs 
of every party do, and must do in a political 
system which obliges us to act sometimes as 
partisans, while it requires us always to be pa- 
triots and statesmen. Diffei-ences of opinion, 
even on the subject of Slavery,, with us are poli- 
tical, not social or personal diflerences. There 
is not one disunionist or disloyalist among us all. 
We are altogether unconscious of any process of 
dissolution going on among or around us. We 
have never been more patient and never loved 
the representatives of other- sections more, than 
now. We bear the same testimony for the peo- 
ple around us here, who, though in tlie very cen- 
ter where the bolt of disunion must fall first and 
be most fearful in its eflects, seem never less 
disturbed than now. We bear the same testi- 
mony for all the districts and States we represent. 
The people of the North are not enemies but 
friends and brethren of the South, faithful and 
true as in the days when death has dealt his ar- 
rows promiscuously among them on common 
battle fields of Freedom. 

We will" not suffer ourselves here to dwell on 
any evidfences of a difierent temper in the South ; 
but we shall be content with expressing our be- 
lief that hostility that is not designedly pro- 
voked, and that cannot piovoke retaliation, is au / 
anomaly that must be traced to casual! excite- ' 
Bients, wliich cannot perpetuate aiienatit)n. 

A canvass for a Piesidential election,, in some 
respects more important, pei'hapiii tAiim any sinaj 



10 



1800, has recently begun. The House of Kepre- 
seitatives was to be organized by a majority, 
■wliile no party should cast more than a plurality 
of votes. Tiie gloom of the late tragedy in Vir- 
ginia rested on the Capitol from the day when 
Congiess assembled. While the two great poli- 
tical parties were peacefully, lawfully, and con- 
stitutionally, though zealously, conducting the 
great national issue between free labor and capi- 
tal labor for the Territories to its proper solu- 
tion, through the trials of the ballot, operating 
directly or indirectly on the various departments 
of the Government, a band of exceptional men, 
contemptuous equally of that great question and 
of the parties to the controversy, and impatient 
of the constitutional system which contines tlie 
citizens of every State to political action by suf- 
frage in organized parties within their own bor- 
ders, inspired by an enthusiasm peculiar to 
themselves, and exasperated by grievances and 
wrongs that some of them had suffered by in- 
roads of armed propagandists of Slavery in Kan- 
sas, unlawful as their own retaliation was. at- 
tempted to subvert Slavery in Virginia by con- 
spiracy, ambush, invasion, and force. The 
method we have adopted, of appealing to the rea- 
son and judgment of the people, to be pro- 
nounced by sutfrage, is tlie only way by which 
free government can be maintained anywhere, 
and the only one, as yet devised, which is in har- 
mony witli the spirit of Christian religion. While 
generous and charitable natures will probably 
concede that John Brown and his associates acted 
on earnest, tliouoh fatally erroneous, convictions, 
yet all good citizens will, nevertheless, agree that 
this atiempt to execute an urdawful purpose in 
Virginia by invasion, involving servile war, was 
an act of sedition and treason, and criminal to 
just the extent that it aflfected the public peace, 
and was destructive of human happiness and 
human life. It is a painful reflection that, after 
so long an experience of the beneficent working 
of our system as we have enjoyed, we have had 
these new illustrations in Kansas and Virginia of 
the existence among us of a class of men so 
misguided and so desperate as to seek to enforce 
their peculiar principles by the sword, drawing 
after it a need for the further illustration by 
their punishment of that great niiral truth, es- 
pecially applicable to a republic, that they who 
take up the sword as a weapon of controversy 
shall perish by the sword. In the latter case, 
the lamented deaths of so many citizens slain 
from an ambush and by surprise — all the more 
lamentable because they were innocent vic- 
tims of a frenzy kindled without tlipir agency, 
in far distant tires — the death even of the of- 
fenders themselves, pitiable, although necessary 
and just, because they acted under delirium, 
which blinded their judgment to the real motive 
of their criminal enterprise ; the alarm and con- 
sternation naturally awakened throughout the 
country, exciting for the moment the fear that 
our whole system, with all its securities for life 
and liberty, was coming to an end — a fear none 
the more endurable because continually aggra- 
vated by new chimeras to which the great lead- 
ing event lent an air of probability ; surely all 
these constituted a sum of public misery which 
•ought to liave satisfied the most morbid appetite 
for social horrors. But, as in the case of the 
gunpowder plot, and the Salem witchcraft, and 
lh« New York colonial negro plot, so now ; the 



original actors were swiftly followed by anotlier 
and kindred class, who sought to prolong and 
widen the public distress by attempting to di- 
rect the indignation which it had excited against 
parties guiltless equally of complicity and of 
sympathy with the offenders. 

Posterity must decide in all the recent cases 
where political responsibility for public disas- 
ters must fall ; and posterity will give little heed 
to our instructions. It was not until the gloomy 
reign of Domitian bad ended, and liberty and 
virtue had found assured refuge under tlie sway 
of the milder Nerva, that the historian arose 
whose narrative of that period of tyranny and 
terror has been accepted by mankind. 

The Republican party being thus vindicated 
against the charge of hostility to the South, 
which has been oflleved in excuse for the men- 
aces of unconstitutional resistance in the event 
of its success, I feel well assured that it will 
sustain me in meeting them in the spirit of the 
defender of the English Commonwealth : 

"Surely they that shall boast as we do to be a free 
nation, and, having the power, shall not also have the 
courage, to remove constitutionally every Governor, 
whether he be the supreme or attbordinate, may please 
their fancy with a ridiculous and painied frredom, fit 
to cozen babies, but are, indeed, under tyranny and 
servitude, as wanting that power, which is llie root and 
source of all liberty, to dispose of and economise i i llie 
land which God hath given them, as members of family 
in iheir own home and free inheritance; without which 
natural and essential power of a free nation, though 
bearing high their heads, they can, in due esteem, be 
thought no be\ter than slaves anil vassals born in the 
tenure and occupation of another inheriting lord, whose 
government, though not illegal or intolerable, hangs on 
them as a lordly scourge, not as a free government." 

The Republican party knows^ as the whole 
country will ultimately come to understand, that 
the noblest objects of national life must perish, 
if that life itself shall be lost, and therefore it 
will accept the issue tendered. It will take up 
the word Union, which others are so willing to 
renounce, and, combining it with that other glo- 
rious thought, Liberty, which has been its in- 
spiration so long, it will move firmly onward,, 
with the motto inscribed on its banner: "'Uniox 
and Liberty, come what may, iii victory as in 
defeat, in power as out of power, now and for- 
ever." 

If the Republican party maintain the Union, 
who and what party is to assail it? Only tlie^ 
Democratic party, for there is no other. Will 
the Democratic party take up the assault? The 
menaces of Disunion are made, though not in its 
name, yet in its behalf. It must avow or disa 
vow them. Its silence, thus far, is portentous, 
but is not alarming. The effect of tlie intimida 
tion, if successful, would be to continue the rule 
of tlie Democratic party, though a minority, by 
terror. It certainly ought to need no more than 
this to secure the success of the Rei)ub!ican par- 
ty. If, indeed, the time has come when the 
Democratic party must rule by terror, ir.stead 
of ruling through conceded j)ublic ct)nlldenLe, 
then it is quite certain that it cannot be dis- 
missed too soon. Ruling on that odiim.s pi inci- 
ple, it could not long save either the Constitu- 
tion or public liberty. But I shall not believe 
the Democratic party will consent to stand in 
this position, though it does, througli tlie action 
of its representatives, seem to cover and sustain 
those who threaten disunion. I know the De- 
mocracy of the North. I know thcni now in 
their waning strength. I do not know a possi- 



11 



ble Disunionist among them all. I believe they 
will be as faithful to the Union now as they were 
in the by-gone days when their ranks were full, 
and their challenge to the combat was always 
the war-cry of victory. But, if it shall prove 
otherwise, then the world will all the sooner 
know that every party in the country must stand 
on Union ground ; that the American people 
will sustain no party that is not capable of mak- 
ing a sacrifice of its ambition on the altar of the 
country ; that, although a party may have never 
so much of prestige, and never such traditional 
merit, yet, if it be lacking in one virtue of loy- 
alty to the Union, all its advantages will be una- 
vailing; and then obnoxious as, through long- 
cherished and obstinate prejudices, the Repub- 
lican party is in the capital States, yet even 
there it will advance like an army with banners, 
winning the favor of the whole people, and it 
will be armed with the national confidence and 
support, when it shall be found the only party 
that defends and maintains the integrity of the 
Union. 

Those who seek to awake the terrors of dis- 
union, seem to me to have loo hastily considered 
the conditions under which they are to make their 
attempt. Who believes that a Republican Admi- 
nistration and Congress could practice tyranny 
under a Constitution which interposes so many 
checks as ours ? Yet that tyranny must not only 
be practised, but must be intolerable, and there 
must be no remaining hope for constitutional re- 
lief, before forcible resistance can find ground to 
stand on anywhere. 

The people of the United States, acting in con- 
formity with the Constitution, are the supreme 
tribunal to try and determine all political issues. 
They are as competent to decide the issue of to- 
morrow as they have been heretofore to decide 
the issues of other days. They can reconsider 
hereafter and reverse, if need be, the judgment 
they shall pronounce to-day, as they have more 
than once reconsidered and reversed their judg- 
ments in former times. It needs no revolution to 
correct any error, or prevent any danger, under 
any circumstances. 

Nor is any new or special cause for revolution 
likely to occur under a Republican Administra- 
tion. We are engaged in no new transaction, not 
even in a new dispute. Our fathers undertook a 
great work for themselves, for us, and for our 
successors — to erect a free and federal empire, 
whose arches shall span the North American con- 
tinent, and reflect the rays of the sun throughout 
his whole passage from one to the other of the 
great oceans. They erected thirteen of its col- 
umns all at once. These are standing now, the 
admiration of mankind. Their successors added 
twenty more ; even we who are here have shaped 
and elevated three of that twenty, and all these 
are as firm and as steadfast as the first thirteen ; 
and more will yet be necessary when we shall 
have rested from our labors. Some among us 
prefer for these columns a composite material ; 
others a pure white marble. Our fathers and our 
predecessors differed in the same way, and on 
the same point. What execrations should we not 
all unite in pronouncing on any statesman who 
heretofore, from mere disappointment and disgust 
at being overruled in his choice of materials, for 
any new column then to be quarried, should have 
laid violent hands on the imperfect structure, and 
brought it down to the earth, there to remain a 



wreck, instead of a citadel of a world's best 
hopes ! 

I remain now in the opinion I have uniformly 
expressed here and elsewhere, that these hasty 
threats of Disunion are so unnatural that they 
will find no hand to execute them. We are of 
one race, language, liberty and faith ; engaged, 
indeed, in varied industry, but even that indus- 
try so diversified, brings us into more intimate 
relations with each other than any other people, 
however homogenous, and though living under a 
consolidated government, ever maintained. We 
languish throughout, if one joint of our Federal 
frame is smitten ; while it is certain that a part 
dissevered must perish. You may refine as you 
please about the structure of the Government, 
and say that it is a compact, and that a breach, 
by one of the States or by Congress, or any one 
article, absolves all the members from allegiance, 
and that the States may separate when they 
have, or fancy they have cause for war. But 
once try to subvert it, and you will find that it is 
a Government of the whole people — as individu- 
als, as well as a compact of States ; that every 
individual member of the body politic is con- 
scious of his interest and power in it, and knows 
that he will be helpless, powerless, hopeless, 
when it shall have gone down. Mankind have a 
natural right, a natural instinct, and a natural 
capacity for self-government ; and when, as here 
they are sufficiently ripened by culture, they will 
and must have self-government, and no other. — 
The framers of our Constitution, with a wisdom 
that surpassed all previous understanding among 
men, adapted it to these inherent elements of 
human nature. He strangely, blindly misunder- 
stands the anatomy of the great system, who 
tliinks that its only bonds, or even its strongest 
ligaments, are the written compact or the multi- 
plied and thoroughly ramified roads and 
thoroughfares of trade, commerce and social 
intercourse. These are strong, indeed, but its 
chiefest instruments of cohesion — those which 
render it inseparable and indivisible — are the mil- 
lions of fibres of millions of contented, hapjjy 
human hearts, binding by their affections, their 
ambition and their best hopes equally the high 
and low, the rich and the poor, the wise and un- 
wise, the learned and untutored, even the good 
and the bad, to a Government, the first, the last, 
and the only such one that has ever existed, 
which takes equal heed always of their wants, 
their wishes and their opinions ; and appeals to 
them all, individually, once in a year, or in two 
years, or at least in four years, for their expressed 
consent and renewal, without which it must 
cease. No, go where you will, and to what class 
you may, with commissions for your fatal service 
in one hand, and your bounty counted by the 
hundred or the thousand pieces of silver in the 
other, a thousand re sisters will rise up for every 
recruit you can engage. On the banks equally of 
the St. Lawrence and the Rio Grande, on the At- 
lantic and the Pacific coasts, on the shores of the 
Gulf of Mexico, and in the dells of the Rocky 
Mountains, among the fishermen of the banks of 
Newfoundland, the weavers and spinners ©f Mas- 
sachusetts, the stevedores of New York, the 
miners of Pennsylvania, Pike's Peak and Califor- 
nia, the wheat-growers of Indiana, the cotton and 
sugar planters on the Mississippi, among the vol- 
untary citizens from every other land not less than 
the native born, the Christian and the Jew, 



12 



among the Indians on the prairies, the contuma- 
cious Mormons in the Deseret, the Africans free, 
the Africans in bondage, the inmates of hospitals 
and almshouses, and even the criminals in the 
penitentiaries, rehearse the story of your wrongs 
and their own never so eloquently and never so 
mournfully, and appeal to them to riso. They 
will ask you, '• Is this all 1" "Are you more just 
than Washington, wiser than Hamilton, more hu- 
mane than Jefiferson '? " " What new form of 
Government or of Union have you the power to 
establish, or even the cunning to devise, that will 
be more just, more safe, more free, more gentle, 
more beneficent, or more glorious than thisl" 
And by these simple interrogatories you will be 
silenced and confounded. 

Mr. President, we are perpetually forgetting 
this subtle and complex, yet obvious and natural, 
mechanism of our Constitution ; and because we 
do forget it, we are continually wondering how 
it is that a confederacy of thirty and more States, 
covering regions so vast, and regulating interests 
so various of so many millions of men, consti- 
tuted and conditioned so diversely, works right 
on. We are continually looking to see it stop 
and stand still, and fall suddenly into pieces. 
But, in truth, it will not stop ; it cannot stop ; it 
was made not to stop, but to keep in motion — 
in motion always, and without force. For my 
own part, as this wonderful machine, when ii had 
newly come from the hands of its almost divine 
inventors, was the admiration of my earlier 
years, although it was then but imperfectly 
known abroad, so now, when it forms the central 
figure in the economy of the world's civilization, 
and the best sympathies of mankind favor its 



continuance, I expect that it will stand and work 
right on until men shall fear its failure no more 
than we now apprehend that the sun will cease 
to hold its eternal place in the heavens. 

Nevertheless, I do not expect to see this pure- 
ly popular, though majestic system always work- 
ing on unattended by the presence and exhibi- 
tion of human temper and human passions. 
That would be to expect to enjoy rewards, bene- 
fits, and blessings without labor, care, and watch- 
fulness — an expectation contrary to Divine ap- 
pointment. These are the discipline of the 
American citizen, and he must inure himself to 
it. When, as now, a great policy, fastened upon 
the country through its doubts and fears, con- 
firmed by its habits, and strengthened by per- 
sonal interests and ambitions, is to be relaxed 
and changed, in order that the nation may have 
its just, and natural, and free developments, 
then, indeed, all the winds of controversy are let 
loose upon us from all points of the political 
compass, we see objects and men only through 
political hazes, mists, and doubtfval and lurid 
lights. The earth seems to be heaving under 
our feet, and the pillars of the noble fabric that 
protects us to be trembling before our eyes. 
But the appointed end of all this agitation comes 
at last, and always seasonably ; the tumults of 
the people subside ; the country becomes calm 
once more ; and then we find that only our 
senses have been disturbed, and that they have 
betrayed us. The earth is firm as always before, 
and the wonderful structure, for whose safety we 
have feared so anxiously, now more firmly fixed 
than ever, still stands unmoved, enduring and 
immovable. 



EVENING JOTTRNAL TRACTS.-No. 3. 



Democratic Leaders for Disuj^iojst. 



-•♦•- 



SPEECH 

OF 

HON. HENET WILSON, 



OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 25^ 1860. 



The Senate proceeded to consider the following resolutions, 
gubmitted by Mr. Brown on the 18th instant: 

Ref^.olved, That the Territories are the common property of 
all the States, and that ;t is the privileg-e of the citizens of all 
the States to go into the Territories with every kind or descrip- 
tion of property recoarnized by the Constitution of the Lnited 
States, and held under the laws of any of the States; and that 
it is the constitutional duty of the lawmalcine power, wherever 
loufred or by whomsoever exercised, whether by the Congress 
or Territorial Legislature, to enact such laws as may be found 
necessary for the adequate and sufficient protection of such 
property. 

ReaoH^d, That the Committee on Terntoi ies be instructed 
to insert, in any bill they may report for the orsanization of 
new Territories, a clause declarmg it to be the duty of the 
Territorial Legislature to enact adequate and sufficient laws 
for the protection of all kinds of property, as above described, 
within the limits of the Territory ; and that, upon its failure or 
refusal to do so, it is the admitted duty of Congress to inter- 
fere and pass such laws. 

Mr. Wilson, Mr. President, when the Republic entered the 
family of nations, it iiroclaimed to kings and princes, to no- 
bles and privileged classes, to toiling freemen and lowly bond- 
men, the equality of man. Passing now through the eighty- 
fourth year of national life, America presents to the gaze of 
nations the humiliating and saddening sijectacle of a Repub- 
lic, which began its independent existence by the promulga- 
tion of a bill of rights as old as creation and as wide as hu- 
manity, distracted by discordant and angry discussions upon 
issues growing out of the bondage of four million men. 

Slavery in America— our connections with it. and relations 
to it. the obligations these connections and relations impose 
upon us as men, as citizens of the States and of the United 
States make the issues of the age, the transcendent magni- 
tude of which command the pr'ofoundest attention of the 
country. In the crowded city and the lonely dwelling, the 
public press and the judicial tribunal, the hall of legislation 
and the temple of the living God— everywhere— goes on the 
" irrepressible conflict" between the subUme creed of the char- 
ter of independence and the aggressive spirit of slavery; be- 
tween the institutions of freedom our fathers founded and the 
system of human bondage which now darkens the land, cast- 
ing its baleful shadows over the Republic, obscui-ing its lustre 
and marring its symmetry and beauty. 

Within fifteen States of this Democratic Republic, which 
commenced its career by uttering the ideas of equality and 
liberty that live in the throbbing hearts of the toihng masses, 
and nurse even the wavering hopes of hapless bondmen 
amid the thick gloom of rayless oppression, more than four 
million human beings, made in the image of God, are held in 
perpetual bondage. By inexorable laws, sanctioned by the 
merciless force of public opinion, these millions are denied 
the rights of manhood, and degraded to the abject condition 
of chattelhood. To them, the hallowed relations of husband 
and wife, parent and child, are held, not by the sacred rights 
of a common humanity, but by the will of masters. The laws, 
the customs, the \jublic opinion, which have sunk these mil- 
lions fi-om the dignity of humanity down to the degradation 
of chattels, have founded and developed a privileged class, 
which now controls the slaveholding States. This class now 
rules these fifteen States, abrogating, in support of its inter- 
ests, the inborn, inbred, constitutional right of freedom of 
speech and freedom of the press. In these States, the power 
of this class is overshadowing, resistless, complete. 



Over the Federal Government this class, this slave power, 
has achieved complete dominion.^ The slave power this day 
holds the National Government, in all its departments, in ab- 
solute subjugation. In this chamber, where sit the represent- 
atives of sovereign commonwealths, that power retains un- 
brok'.n sway. That power bids the Supreme Court utter its 
decrees, and that high tribunal obeys its imperative commands. 
That power holds the President in the hollow of its hand, com- 
pelling him to declare that "slavery exists in Kansas by virtue 
of the Constitution;'' that "the master has the right to take hia 
slave into the territories as property, and have it protected there 
under the Federal Constitution;" that "neither Congi-ess nor 
the Territorial Legislature, nor any human power, has any au- 
thority to annul or impair this vested right." That power sum- 
moned the aspiring Vice-President to his own Kentucky, to 
give his assurances "that this constitutional right exists :" 
that "we must hold to this principle, we must stand by it;" 
and "if it cannot be enforced for want of proper legislation to 
enforce it, sufficient legislation must be passed, or our Gov- 
ernment is a failure." That power lays its iron hand uj^on the 
representatives of free and proud commonwealths, in this 
chamber and in the other, compelling them to disavow their 
own recorded opinions, to accept the monstrous dogma, that 
"neither Congress, nor a Territorial Legislature, nor any hu- 
man power, has any authority to annul or impair the vested 
right" of the master to have his slave protected as property 
in the Territories under the Federal Constitution. Well might 
the Vice-President, in view of the recent triumphs and the 
imperial sway of the slave power, proudly say to the men of 
his native Kentucky, " We stand in a good position !" "We 
have the Executive ; we have the laws; we have the courts; 
and that is a great advance from where we stood ten years 
ago !" 

The glowing pages of that history which records the deeds 
of the heroic men who, in defence of the inherent and inde- 
feasible rights of humanity, accepted the bloody issues of civil 
war, and defied and baffled the gigantic power of the British 
Empire, won national independence, and framed a Constitu- 
tion for united America, bear to us of this generation the am- 
plest evidences that they, with rare exceptions, believed 
slavery to be a local and temporary evil, which British avarice 
planted and British power nurtured in America, and which 
the advancing current of a humane and Christian civilization 
would sweep from the land it stained and polluted. But sev- 
enty years, Mr. President, have now passed away since the 
inauguration of the Government under the Federal Constitu- 
tion. That six hundred thousand bondmen, valued at less 
than fifty million dollars, have increased to four million, 
valued at more than two thousand mallion. That feeble sys- 
tem of African slavery, which seemed to the hopeful eyes of 
our patriotic fathers smitten with the disease of original siiji 
has expanded into a gigantic system, which now casts its chil- 
ling influences over the land, polluting the very sources of 
national life, perverting the moral sense of the nation, cor- 
rupting the sentiment of justice, humanity and liberty, and 
leaving the traces of its ruinous power upon the institutions 
and upon the soil of the Republic, which it turns to barrenness 
and desolation. 

Sir, this expansion and growth of the system of African 
slavery, this development of the slave power, during the past 
seventy years, have wrought a wonderful change, a complete 
revolution, in the sentiments and opinions of the public men 
who control the councils of America. What a contrast be- 
tween slavery in America in 1789. and slavery in America in 
1660! Then, it was weak; now, it is strong. Then, its influ- 



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-nces over the nation were impotent; now, it holds the Gov- 
_rnment in its iron grasp. Then, tlie public men who dictated 
ihe p-olicy of tlie (iovernment deemed it to be a moral, social 
and political evil, which limnaiiity and reli^'ion deplored ; now, 
it is regarded by the men who control the (jovei'niiient as a 
positive Kood, a beneficent system. " a great moral," in the 
words of the t^enator from Aiissij^sijipi [Mr. Hkown], "social 
and political blessing-a blessins; to the master and a blessiiiar 
to the slave." Then, to proliitiit it in the Teri'itories was\ 
deemed alike the ripht and duty of the (iovernment ; nov,', the 
avowed doctrine of the Administration of the Government is, 
that the slaveholders have tlie rifiht to carry their slaves as 
property into the Territories, and hold them there as property 
by virtue of tlie Constitution, and that "neither Congress nor 
a Territorial Legislature, nor any Imman power, has authority 
to annul or impair this vested liirht." 'then, to cherish, as a 
living faith, the creed "tliat all men are ci-eated equal;" to 
Delieve slavery to be an evil ; to l>elieve, with Ueni'y, tliat " a 
time would come to abolish this lamentable evil;" and with 
Jeffei'son, that "notliing is more certainly written in the book 
of fate, than tliat this people shall be free," brought neither 
proscription from power nor indignities from the people ; now, 
these sentiments bring uiion the public man the proscriptions 
of power, the ridicule and reproach of presses in the interest 
of power, and subject the American citizen, whose rights are 
gruarded by constitutional guaranties, in the slave States to the 
insults and degrading indignities of lawless and brutal mobs, 
maddened by tlie fanaticism of slavery, to arrests, imprison- 
nients, fines, and banishments. Then, the people of Amer- 
ica confided their new Government to the guardianship and 
guidance of statesmen known by their acts and recorded opin- 
ions to be unalterably opposed to the slave trade, to the per- 
petuity of slavery, to its expansion into the vast empire of 
the Northwest; now, the public men of America, who inherit 
the sentiments and opinions of Washington, .Tefferson, Madi- 
son, Adams, Jay, Hamilton, and their illustrious compeers, 
who would consecrate the territorial possessions of the Uepub- 
lic to free institutions for all, are admonished, in these cham- 
bers, that they will not l)e permitted, in the slave States, to 
avow their sentiments, or to advocate tlie election to the 
Presidency, inl^tiO, of a candidate representing their policy; 
aye that the election of such a candidate will be the cause for 
the dissolution of'the Union. 

In the month of August, 1620, twenty Afi'ican bondmen were 
borne into the waters of Virginia. At Jamestown, in 1620, 
began that system of human slavery in America, which now, 
in 1860, hauglitily assumes to mould and fashion the policy of 
the nation; to expand itself over the vast possessions of the 
Republic ; to repress the inborn right of the freedom of speech 
and of the press; to arrest and to imprison, to scourge and to 
banish American citizens for entertaining, cherishing and 
uttering the sentiments of the great statesmen of the North 
and of the South, who carried us through the fire and blood 
of the Revolution— statesmen whose names are forever asso- 
ciated with national independence and constitutional free- 
do m._ 

This system of African slavery, planted on the shores of 
Virginia, grew and spread over America under the colonial 
and commercial policy of England. Kncouraged by British 
legislation, and fostered by royal favor, the merchants of 
England transported from the shores of western Africa, to the 
thirteen British colonies, from the middle of the seventeenth 
century to 1776, more than three hundred thousand of the 
children of Africa. The coffers of lier merchants were filled 
with gold soiled with the blood of these hapless bondmen- 
For nearly two centuries the party of the slave trade controlled 
the Government, and directed the policy of England. Kings 
and queens, lords and commons, judges and attorneys-general 
and bishops, all gave to the traffic in the bodies of men their 
persistent support. Parliament pronounced " the trade highly 
advantageous to the kingdom and its colonies." Queen Anne 
instructed the Governor of New York and New Jersey "to 
give due encouragement to the Royal African Company." The 
merchants and manufacturers clamored for the extension and 
protection of the African slave traffic ; and when the charter 
of the Royal African Company expired in 1749, the ports of 
Aft-ica, for thirty degrees, from Cape Blanco to Loango St. 
Paul's, were thrown open to the free competition of British 
commerce. Under this colonial and commercial policy of 
England, the trafiBc in the bodies of men, between the coasts 
of Africa and the Spanish, French and British colonies in the 
western world,expanded into gigantic proportions, and slavery 
spread and increased with such fearful rapidity, that the Amer- 
ican colonies were startled and appalled; and "laws designed 
to restrict importations of slaves,"^ says Bancroft, " are scat- 
tered along the records of colonial legislation." To check 
their importation, Virginia imposed a tax ; but " the African 
Company obtained the repeal of the law." " The British 
Government," says Madison, "constantly checked the at- 
tempts of Virginia to put a stop to Vcas inefrnal troMc."" 
Oglethorpe, the founder of Georgia, forbiide slavery ; but "the 
merchants got the Government to sanction slavery there." 
Even South Carolina, for attempting to restrict the slave traffic, 
received the rebuke of the British Government, wliich steadily 
and relentlessly resisted a'\ colonial action tending to check 
the inhuman traffic in the souls and bodies of men. Up to the 
hour of national independence, the Government of England 
sternly rejected all colonial restrictions upon slavery and the 
slave trade, and persisted in the policy of forcing that trade 
upon all her colonies, which were "not allowed," in the words 
of the Earl of Dartmouth, 1775, "to check or discourage, in 
any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation." British ava- 
rice planted slavery in America; British legislation nurtured 
and sustained it; and British statesmen sanctioned and 
guarded it. 

In spite, however, of the avarice of the men who guided the 
commercial and colonial policy of England, spite of the potent 
influences of the statesmen who swayed the councils of the 
Throne, the slave trade and slavery found sturdy opponents 
in England and America. In the middle of the eighteenth 
century, years before Granville Sharpe brought James Somer- 
set before the King's Bench— twenty years before Lord Mans- 



field pronounced that immortal opinion, which reversed the 
joint opinion of York and Talbot that "a slave coming into 
Great Britain doth not become free," and made it forever 
impossible for slaves to lireathe the air of England— John 
Woolman traversed America, proclaiming to Christian men 
that " the practice of continuing men in slavery was not right ;" 
tliat " lilierty was the natural right of all men equally." This 
early iipostie of emancipation found many slave masters on 
the banks of the Hudson, tlie Delaware and the Potomac, 
who encouraged the emancipation of the bondmen, "because 
they liad no contract for their labor, and liberty was their 
right." During the years of agitation and discussion, from the 
treaty of Paris in 1762 to the opening dawn, of the Revolution 
at Lexington— years, during which the rights of the colonies 
and the rights of man were discussed with masterly power by 
the most gifted minds of America, the popular leaders in New 
England, the middle colonies and Virginia, did not fail to see 
and to acknowledge the wrongfulness of slavery, and to de- 
nounce the slave traffic and the slavery-extending policy of the 
British Government. The records of those days of trial and 
of glory will bear to all coming time the amplest evidence 
that the men who inaugurated the Revolution, carried Ameri- 
ca from colonial dependence to national independence, were 
not only hostile to the slave trade, but to the perpetual exist- 
ence of slavery itself. 

. When the first Congress assembled, in 1774, the humanity 
of the colonies, long repressed and baffled by the power of 
England, found utterance. That assemblage of illustrious 
men declared that " God never intended a part of the human 
race to hold property in, and unbounded power over, others;" 
that they " would not imiwirt slaves, or buy slaves imported by 
others." These illustrious statesmen framed the articles of 
association which united the colonies in one federative Union. 
By the second article of that bond of union, the slave trade 
was prohibited ; and that prohibition of the inhuman traffic 
in man was sustained by the men of ^the North and the men 
of the Soutli, and by the colonies of the North and of the 
South. Thus did the slave trade, which Jefferson afterward, 
in the original draft of the Declaration, branded as an " exe- 
crable commerce," a "piratical warfare," receive the con- 
demnation of the men who accepted the bloody issues of civil 
war in defence of their periled liberties. 

When the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed, 
nearly half a million of men were held in bondage in America. 
Influenced by the rising spirit of liberty, by the awakened 
sense of the natural rights of man, which had found utterance 
in the charter of independence, the Northern States early 
adopted measures tending to emancipation. Nor were efforts 
for the emancipation of the bondmen confined to the North- 
ern States. Jefferson and AVythe, commissioned to revise the 
laws of Virginia, after the peace of 1783, prepared a plan of 
gradual emancipation ; but timid counsels prevailed, and the 
Old Dominion failed to take her place in the list of free com- 
monwealths. Timidity, the sordid spirit of gain, the lust and 
pride of the privileged class— not the humane sentiments of 
Washington and Henry, Jefferson and Wythe, Mason and 
Randolph- controlled the policy of that great State. But Mr. 
Jefferson, in a letter to Dr. Price, of England, in 1785, thus 
spoke of the cause of emancipation in Virginia: 

"This is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for 
the interesting spectacle oi justice in covjlict with avarice 
(nid iyfipi'-emion — a conflict wherein the sacred side is daily 
gaining recruits, from the influx into office of young men 
grown up and growing up. These have sucked in the princi- 
ples of lilierty, as it were, with their mothers' milk; and it is 
to them I look with anxiety to tm-n the fate of the question," 

When the Convention assembled in May, 1787, to frame the 
Constitution of the United States, Massachusetts was a free 
commonwealth. The foot of the slave no longer pressed the 
rock of Plymouth, nor the hallowed sods of Lexington, Con- 
cord or Bunker Hill. Other Northern States had taken meas- 
ures for ultimate emancipation ; but slavery, in its modified 
form, still lingered in the North. In the whole country, nearly 
six hundred thousand human beings were held in servitude ; 
but these bondmen were on>y estimated at the average value 
of eighty dollars each ; and Elbridge Gerry estimated the 
whole value of the slaves at that time, south of the Potomac, 
at $10,000,000. Slavery existed in each of the States by the 
mere force of the laws, usages and regulations of the people 
of each State where it was recognized as a mere local institu- 
tion. 

In that assemblage of illustrious statesmen, met to frame a 
Constitution for a free people, were men whose wisdom in 
council and valor in the field had carried the country through 
the fire of a revolutionary war. The baptism of freedom was 
on their brows, and its spirit burned in their bosoms. Over 
that assemblage of statesmen presided the peerless Washing- 
ton, who "wished as much as any man living to see slavery 
abolished by legislative authority," and to " accomplish it by 
the only proper and effective mode," his "suffrage should 
never be wanting." Franklin regarded slavery as an "atro- 
cious debasement of human nature," and he was prepared to 
" step to the verge of vested power to discourage every spe- 
cies of tr;iific in the bodies of our fellow men." Madison, 
whose name is forever associated with the Constitution of the 
United States, pronounced slavery "a dreadful , calamity," 
and he " thought it wi'ong to admit in the Constitution the idea 
that there could be property in man." Gouverneur Morris, 
whose hand was to give the finishing form to the work of the 
Convention, denounced slavery as " a nefarious institution." 
Luther Martin believed that " God was Lord of all, viewing 
with equal eye the poor African slave and his American mas- 
ter;" and he would "authorize the General Government to 
make such regulations as should be most advantageous for the 
gradual abolition of slavery and the emancipation of the 
slaves which were already in the States." Elbridge Gerry 
" would leave slavery to be dealt with by the States, but he 
would give no sanction to it." Oliver Ellsworth believed 
" slavery would soon be only a speck in the country." George 
Mason declared that slavery produced "the most pernicious 
effects on manners;" that "every master of slaves is born a 



petty tyrant;" that "it brought the curse of Heaven on a 
country." Roger Sherman " would not tax slaves, because it 
would imply that they were property." Rufus King would by 
law enact that "slavery shall be forever proliibited" in the 
western Territories." Alexander Hamilton, James Wilson, 
Robert Morris, and other statesmen, whose names are imper- 
ishably associated with the constitutional history of the Re- 
public, have left in the records of the country their senti- 
ments of hostility to slavery. The fi-amers of the Constitu- 
tion, like the members of the first Congress, who branded the 
slave trade ; the members of the Congress of 1776, who de- 
clared that "all men are created equal;" and the members 
of the Congress of 1787, who stamped the words "slavery shall 
be and is forever prohibited" on every foot of the territory 
northwest of the Ohio, were hostile to the traffic in men, to 
the extension of slavery, and to its perpetuity in America. 

But there came into that Convention the representatives 
of a small but powerful class, which clung, in South Carolina 
and Georgia, with relentless tenacity to the British slave-tra- 
ding and slave-extending and slaA'e-perpetuating policy. In 
"complaisance to this class in South Carolina and G-eorgia," 
the signers of the Declaration of Independence had erased 
from the original draft of Jefferson the arraignment of the 
British monarch for " waging cruel war against human nature 
itself," "violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty m 
the persons of a distant people, who never offended him. cap- 
tivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemi- 
sphere." This class had broken the s.cond article of the as- 
sociation of union, which prohibited the importation and the 
traffic in slaves; and in that time of trial and of anxiety, 
when the men who had met undismayed the power of Eng- 
land on the perilous ridges of battle, tremljled for the future 
of their country, the representatives of this slavehohling class 
ofthe extreme south came into that council of patriotic states- 
men, ready to peril the unity of the i'vepublic, unless they could 
"Wring from the Convention the power to continue t!ie inhuman, 
loathsome, and polluted traffic in the muscles and bones of 
men— a traffic which Jefferson l)randed as an " execrable com- 
merce," and Madison pronounced "infernal." To silence the 
clamorous demands of the Rutledges and Finckneys, the But- 
lei-s and Baldwins— the representatives of this class -the Con- 
vention made a compromise, by which they permitted tlie 
slave trade to continue for twenty years longer, unchecked liy 
national legislation, three-fifths of the slaves to berei)resented 
In the House, and a provision to ))e incorporated into the 
Constitution for the rendition of persons owing sei-vice or 
labor in one State escaping into another. These concessions 
Wire wrung from the Convention, not by the power of tlie 
slaveholding class, but by its weakness, rather— bj- the fatal 
confidence ofthe statesmen of that day, that slavery would 
soon pass away under the influence of the ideas they had pro- 
claimed and the institutions they had founded. The slave 
representation and the clause concerning fusitives from hilior 
were then regarded as questions of little practical importance, 
while the authoritywholly to extinguish the slave traffic after 
1808, and the inhibition of slavery by the ordinance of 1787 in 
the Northwest, were deemed fatal to the expansion and de- 
velopment of slavery and its malign influences. 

The organization ofthe Federal tjovernment, under the Con- 
stitution, demonstrated the impotency of the slave perpetuists 
and the anti slavery sentiment of the people. Washington 
was unanimously borne into the Presidency, and he had 
avowed it to be "among his first Welshes to see some plan 
adopted by which slavery in this country may be abolished liy 
law." Adams was made Vice-President, and he held that 
"consenting to slavery is a sncrilesrious breach of trust." Jef- 
ferson was made Secretary of State, and he had declared that 
"the abolition of domestic slavery was the greatest object of 
desire ;" tfiat " the whole commerce between master and slave 
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions the 
most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading 
submission on the other"— that " the statesman should be 
loaded with execration who. permitting one-half the citizens 
to trample on the rights of the other, transforms those into 
despots, and these into enemies, destroys the morals of the 
one part, and the cnnor putricR of the other; that he " trem- 
bled for his country when he reflected that God was just; that 
his justice cannot sleep forever;" that "the Almighty has no 
attribute which can take side with us in such a contest." 
Hamilton was placed at the head of the Treasury, and he was 
a meml)er of an anti-slavery society in New York, where he 
united in a petition for the emancipation of those who, "free 
by the laws of God, are held in slavery by the laws of the 
State." Jay was made Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, 
and he believed slavery to be an " iniquity"—" a sin of crim- 
son/lye," and that "our prayers to Heaven would be impious 
until we abolished it." And from the presidency of an aboli- 
tion society, tliis pure and stainless character was summoned 
by Washington to preside over that highest judicial tribunal. 
Gouverneur Morris believed that "slavery brought the curse 
of Heaven upon a country," and Washington sent him to 
represent his government at the Court of France. Madison, 
Gerry. Langdon, King, Ulsworth, Sherman, Robert Moriis, 
and other renowned statesmen, whose anti-slavery sentiments 
were recorded in the history of the country, held "seats in the 
Senate and House of Representatives. Those patriotic states- 
men, into whose keeping the American people intrusted the 
new formed Government, were committed— fully committed- 
asrainst the slave traffic, the extension of slavery, and for the 
ultimate emancipation of slavery in all America. 

The foremost men of that day, not in the national councils, 
were equally committed against the slave system. They saw 
what Washington saw and expressed, "the direful effects of 
slavery.'" Patrick Henry declared that "it would rejoice his 
very soul, that every one of his fellow-beings was emancipat- 
ed;" that he "believed the time would come to aboli.sh this 
lamentable evil;" that he "would transmit to their descend- 
ants, together with their slaves, a pity for their unhappy lot, 
and an abhorrence of slavery." James Iredell, sooo to be 
summ )ned by Washington to the bench ofthe Supreme Court, 
in the Convention of North Carolina, avowed that, "when the 
entire abolition of slavery takes place, it will be an event 



which must be pleasing to every generous mind, and every 
friend of human nature." The great Maryland lawyer, Luther 
Martin, declared "slavery is inconsistent with the genius of 
reiniblicanism, and has a tendency to destroy those principles 
on which it is supported, as it lessens the sense ofthe equal 
rights of mankijid, (tnd habiiuate.s us to tyranny and op- 
pression. William Pinckney also declared, that "nothing is 
more clear, than that the effect of slavery is to destroy that 

REVERKNCK FOR LIBERTY which is THE VrrAL PRI.V'CIPLE OF A RE- 
PUBLIC;" that "the dreary sj-stem of partial bondage is iniqui- 
tous and most dishonorable to Maryland; that, "by the eter- 
n(d, principles of n(iturul justice, no master has a right to 
liold Ms slave in hondage a single hour."' And this great 
jurist uttered these prophetic words, whicb we see fulfilled in 
this age: "If slavery continues fifty years longer, its effe- ■'v 
^cill he seen in the decay ofthe spirit of liberty in Utejree 
States.'' 

The enduring records of the Republic will carry down to 
after ages the sentiments of hostility to human .bondage, 
uttered by the men wlio, in defense of periled liberty, defied 
the power of the British Rmpire, and gave independence to the 
North American Republic. Tlie history of that age is radiant 
with the glowing tltou.ghts and burning words against African 
slavery, which British avarice planted on the virgin soil ofthe 
western world. Under their inspiring words, emancipation 
societies sprang into being in the South and in the North, and 
the noblest names that gi-ace the pages of our history were en- 
rolled upon the records of these societies. A national anti- 
slavery society was oi-ganized, and the highest hopes of the 
patriot, the philanthroi)ist, and the Christian, seemed in pro- 
cess of realization. Colored freemen, many of whom had 
periled their lives on tlie striclcen fields of the Revolution, 
were allowed the rights of citizenship in some of the States. 
In Maryland and North Carolina they possessed this right, and 
young Tennessee, in 17VH), came into the Union with a Consti- 
tution which permitted free colore<:l men to exercise that high 
right of citizenship. In New York, .Chancellor i'oliert K. Liv- 
im^ston, one of the foremost men of his aire in America, 
reported against a bill referred to him for the gradual abolition 
of slavery, l^ecause it did not give to the emancipated bond- 
men the full rig'its of citizenship and the right of suffrage ; for 
they "could not," he said, "be deprived of these essential 
rights without shocking the principles of equal liberty, and 
laying the foundati^ n of an aristocracy of the most dangerous 
and malignant kind, rendering power permanent and heredi- 
tary in the hands of tliose persons who declare their oricin 
through white ancestors only." Such were the libei-al senti- 
ments of a statesman of exalted character and large and varied 
experiences, who acted as a member ofthe committee to draft 
the Declaration of Indeiiendence, and as Secretary of Foreign 
Affairs under the Confederation: who administered the oath 
of office to the first President, and negotiated the treaty for 
the acquisition of Louisiana. 

That slave power now compels public men, nurtured and 
reared amidst the influences of free institutions, to hasten 
with alacrity to disavow past sentiments and opinions, to accept 
the dogmas of tlie slave propa.ganda, and to join in hunting 
down old comrades. That power has established in the slave 
States a relentless despotism over the freedom of speech •«.nd 
of the press, and of correspondence through I he mails. That 
power will not permit American citizens to entertain, utter, 
print, or circulate, sentiments and opinions concerninsslavery 
which were avowed by .lelfei'son, Henry, Mason and the great 
m.en of Virsrinia of the Revolutionary era, or even by McDow- 
ell, Summers, and Randolph, in the Convention of 1830. The 
American citizen, living under a Constitiation which guaran- 
tees free speech, holds that right subject to arbitrary laws or 
to the lawless acts of brutal mobs. George Fitzhugh, one of 
the apostles of slavery, the author of a work on " 'J'he Failurb 
OF Free Society," in which he avows the doctrine that ' slav- 
ery, BLACK or white, is right and necessary, now declares, 
with regard to the "riglit of private judgment, freedom of 
speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of reli.iriou." that 
"the South takes care to trammel these sterner rights (so 
called) quite as efficiently, by an austere public oi)inion, as 
Louis Napoleon does bylaw, or by mere volition ;" that "we 
propose to deter men from applying the axe to the root of our 
southern institutions (that is, by discussions or recurring to 
'fundamental iirincii)les'), first l^y moral suasion or monition, 
next by tar and feathers, and, that failing, by the halter." 

Sir, what a humiliating spectacle does the Republic now pre- 
sent to the gaze of mankind ! I speak not of the millions of 
beings sunk from the lofty level of a common humanity down 
to the abject submission of unreasoning beasts of burden, nor 
of the laws that shrivel the mind and debase the soul of the 
bondman ; but I speak of the deeds of lawlessness and inhu- 
manity against ft-ee American citizens — deeds which shock 
every manly bosom. The mails daily bring us intelligence of 
the lawless deeds of brutal mobs, ofthe indignities perpetrated 
upon freemen guilty of no crime, unless it be a crime, in 18i)0, 
to clins to the opinions of the fathers of the Republic. The 
Post-Office Department, the Postmaster-General tells us, "per- 
vades every channel of commerce, and eveiy theatre of hu- 
man enterprise; and while visitin.g. as it does kindly, every 
fireside, mingles with the throbbings of almost every heart in 
the land. In the amplitude of its beneficence, it ministers to 
all climes and creeds and pursuits, with the same eager readi- 
ness and with equal fullness of fidelity." This Post-Office De- 
partment, in nearly half the States, is at the mercy of the stu- 
pidity or prejudice of post ■ asters, maddened by sliveryfana- 
ticism, and the correspondence of the people and the public 
journals may he examined, seized and destroyed by these 
censors of despotism ; and this may be. and is done under the 
open sanction of the Administration. Families are l)anished 
from their hearths and homes. Free colored men are forced 
to break the holy ties of kindred, seek homes among stran- 
gers, or be doomed to perpetual slaver , by laws which " pro- 
pose." in the words of Judge Catron, of the Supre'ne Court, 
" to commit an outrage— to perpetrate an opp ^ession and 
cruelty." Surely there is no country in Christendom— no, not 
one— where the freemen of the United States are exposed to 
such insults, such indignities, such lawless oppressions, as in 



the slaveholdin^ States of this Democratic Republic. The 
Presiclent calls our attention to the outrages perpetrated upon 
American citize s in Mexico. There is, sir, more security for 
tlie citizens of Massachusetts, for the eigliteen million people 
of the North, in revolutionary Mexico, rent and torn by civil 
war, than in the slaveholding States. More insults, indignities 
and outrages have been heaped upon freemen in the slave 
States, duruig tlie past one hundred days, than have been per- 
petrated upon American citizens in Mexico during all the 
changes, and revolutions, and civil strifes which have marked 
the forty vears of her independent existence. 

Mr. President, the statesmen of the South, in this chamber 
and in the other wing of the capitol, frankly admit tha" a rev- 
olution concerning slavery has been wrought in the public 
sentiment of t ,e slaveholding States. This admitted revolu- 
tion in the sentimen s of the people of the South has wrought 
tlie change in the policy of the slave States and of the na- 
tional Government now so unmistakably manifest. How did 
the slaveholding class— -a mere handful of men in this nation 
of twenty-six million freemen— work this change in the policy 
of the nation— a change which the sense of justice, the love 
of liberty, the humane and Christian sentiments of the age 
coiidenm? How did this small, and, so far as numbers are 
conctTued, iusigniflcant class of slaveholders aciiieve over 
the councils of Republiciui America an influence so potential ? 

'V\\\i slaveholding class, w' ich shapes and fashions at its 
jjleasure the policy of the General Government, was oorne 
into power l)y tlie Democratic party, ami it is this day uiiheld 
hi nower by the Democratic party. Acquiring the ascendency 
in the Democratic party, this privileged cl^ss has imposed its 
hatefui dogmas upon that party, compelling it to carry its flap, 
to hght its battles, and to bear the crushing l)nrdim of its 
crimes against the rights cf human nature. Democrats of the 
free States, men l)orn under the inspiring influences of free 
institutions, taught in free schools, i;;structed in free churches, 
have, during the last fifteen yeai's, borne the banners of 
shivery extension, and often inglorionsly fallen under the con- 
suming wrath of a betrayed and indignant people. The De- 
mocracy of the North is as much the instrument of the Slave 
Power for extending, upholding and perpetuating human 
slavery in America, as is the army of the Emperor of Austria 
in maintaining his despotic rule in Hungary and Venetia. 

Sir. when the army returned from Mexico, brindng with it 
the title-deeds to half a million square miles of free soil, the 
people of the free States desired it to be consecrated forever 
to freedom and free institutions. The ])emocracy of the 
North, obedient to the popular will, gave their support to the 
policy of slave prohibition; but the Slave Power imperiouslv 
demanded the abandonment of the principle of slave inhihi- 
tio-.i, and Democracy obeyed the i)erem!>tory mandate, aban- 
doned the .letferson proviso, and organized Uta i and New 
Mexico witliout any guaranties for freedom. The ."^lave Pow- 
er, iu the hour of its triumph in its territorial policy, required 
anew fugitive slave law; and the northern Democracy con- 
sented to the enactment of a law which violated evei'y legal 
taiaranty of freemen, shocked the sense of justice and ii t in 
jeopardy the liberties of freemen, of which tlie legal rights of 
the poorest and humblest outweigh the interests of every 
.slaveholder in America. In 1834, the slave pro))agandists 
demanded the repeal of the prohibition of slavery in i(ansas 
and Nefiraska; and the Democracy, in complaisance to the 
slave p(r,ver, re|)ealed that prohibition. Five thou>an!l .ruied 
men of .Missouri marched into Kansas, seized the ballot-boxes, 
elected a Territorial Legislature, planted slavery, enacted in- 
Imman and unchristiai laws for its suiiport. The slave power 
demanded the enforcement of those arhitra y enactments by 
the General Government, and President I'ierce upheld therii 
with the bayonets of the army; and in this he was sunported 
by the Democracy of the North. The slave power demanded 
that Governor Walker and Secretary Stanton should be re- 
moved for exposing the pro-slavery frauds of the October 
flection of 1857; and President Buchanan forced Walker to 
/esign, and removed Stanton, who would not bend; and the 
Democracy of the North upheld the action of the Piesident. 

'I'o crown the long series of outrages upon the people of 
Kansas, the slave power demanded that Congress should force 
the becompton Constitution, the product of fraud and violence, 
upon an unwilling and protesting people ; and the Democracy 
of the North, with a few exceptions, responded to that infa'- 
iiious demand. The slave power requires the abandonment 
of the doctrine, that the people of a Territory can legislate 
against slavery, and the acceptance of the dogma that the 
Constitution protects slavery as property in the Territories; 
and the leaders of the Democracy of the North in tliis cham- 
ber, with two or three exceiitions, accept this new creed, 
which makes every foot of the Territories of the Reiiulilic 
slave soil. The acknowledged chiefs of the slave jiower are 
demandin,' a national slave code for the Territoiies; and 
already tlie aspiring leaders of the Democracy of the North 
are hastening to give assurances that they are prepared to 
acquiesce in that extraordinary demand. The chiefs of the 
slave propaganda are turning their lustful eyes to Cuba, Cen- 
tral America, and Mexico, for territory in which to plant 
slavery; for they hold, that in whatever territory acquired, or 
to be acquired, the flag of the Union waves, slavery for the 
African, and not freedom for all men, is inscribed on its folds. 
The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Brown], one of the ac- 
knowledged leaders of the slaveholding class, declares to his 
constituents, with the frankness that marks his character: 

' Iwant Ouba ; I want Tamaulipas, Potosi. and one or two 
other Mexican States; and Iroanttbemall for the name, rea- 
son—for the planting and spreading of slavery. And a 
footing in Central America will powerfully aid us in acquiring 
those other States. Yes; / tvant these counti'ies for the 
spread, of slavery. I would spread the blessings of slavery, 
lU-e the religion of our Divine Master, to the uttermost 
ends of the earth.; and, rebellious and wicked as the Yankees 
have been, I would even extend it to them.'''' 

These dreams of empires in which to plant slavery fill the 
minds of the leaders of the slave propaganda ; and the Presi- 
,<ient, m asking authority to march the army into Mexico, and 



the Senator from ivo. tsiana latr. sltdetllj, tn pressing lAi . 
Cuba scheme, are acting in response to these ideas of conquest 
and acquisition. Up to this hour, the slave propagandists have 
never made a requisition upon the Northern Democrats which 
has not been complied with, although many of them have seal- 
ed their ready servility with political martyi-dom. 

Sir, to arrest the aggressive policy of the slave propaganda, 
which is perverting the Constitution, subverting the institu- 
tions, disturbing the repose of the country, endangering the 
stability of the Union, and bringing reproach upoo the Ame- 
riciinname: and to restore the' Government to the bolicy of 
its illustri(jus founders, an organization has been formed which 
calls itself the Republican party. This party, which embraces 
in its organization a million and a half of intelligent and patri- 
otic freemen, proclaims no new doctrine; it proposes no new 
experiments. Upon the great and overshadowing question of 
slavery in America, the Republican party accepts the doctrines 
of the Revolutionary fathers, of the North and of the South. 
The Republican party sees, as NVashington saw, "the direful 
effecU ofskn-ery ;" it believes, with Henry, that "slavery is 
a lameiitahU'' evil;'' with Luther Martin, that " slavery is 
incoiisiufcntwiih the geuiusif Ih-puliUcaiimn •'' with Mad- 
ison, that ".sV^w-e/-?/ if<a dreadful ralamity ,•" that "imhecilHy 
is ever aiivndani it mm a (joiiniry filled iviih slaves; " with 
.Monroe, tiiat ".slaveri! lias preyed u//on the very vitals o/" 
the Uiiimi, and hax been prejudicial to all the States ^n 
■ichich it has e.risted." Concurring in these opinions of these 
illustrious patriots and statesmen of the South, the Republican 
party proposes to preserve the vast territorial jiossessions of 
the Republic from '"the ilireful effects" of this "dreadful ca- 
lamity" which "has lu'eyed upon the vitals of the Union,''. by 
api)lying to, and engraving upon, those Territorial possesglona 
these words, " slaci'ry shall he and is Koniiviou prohitit^ed;" 
words which came from the pen of Jefferson, were embodied 
iu the ordinance of 1787, and stamped on every foot of the vir- 
gin sods of the Northwest." 

Relieving freedom to be national, and slavery to be local 
and sectional, "a mere municipal regulation," in the wordsof 
the Sujireme Court, "founded upon and limited to the verge 
of the State law," for which the people of each Stiite that tole- 
rates it are alone responsilde, the Repul)lican party joins issue 
with the sectionalized Democracy, which, uuder the lead of 
men whose vital and aiiimatiog pi'inciple is the propagation 
of slavery, accepts tiie monstrous dogma tiiat slavery by vu'tue 
of the Constitution, exists in all the Territories. Accepting 
tliis doctrine, the Democracy repealed the prohibition of slave- 
ry in Kansas and Nebraska, and resi.sts all Congressional action. 
Accepting this doctrine, the Democracy in those Territoriea 
resists Territorial acts to prohibit slavery, and Government 
officials veto tlieir enactments. Accepting this doctrine, the 
Democratic Legi.-^Iature of New Mexico, under the lead of De- 
mocratic (Government olficials, prompted by Mr. OrERO, the 
Democratic Delegate, " at the solicitation of General R. Davis, 
of Mi-.sis-ri|ipi," have enacted a brutal and bloody slave code. 
Alieady the Democratic chiefs of the slave power are demand- 
ing the enactment of a slave code iiy Congress, and the lead- 
ers of the Democracy are hastening to give them assurances 
that "if." in the words of the Vice-President, "this constitu- 
tional right to hold slaves as property in the Territories cannot 
be enforced for want of proper legislation to enforce it, suffi- 
cient legislation must be passed, or our Government is a fail- 
ure." 

Rejecting the dogmas accepted by the Democracy, and hold- 
in.y, with the Republican fathers, that slavery cannot exist in 
the Territories except liy positive law, and that Congi-ess and 
the peoiile of the Territories may exclude it, the Republican 
party takes issue with the national Democracy, and appeals to 
the intelligent patriotism of the country. It appeals, not to 
the local and temporary interests of sections, but to the last- 
ing interests of the whole country; not to the passions and 
pride of classes, but to the sober judgment, the sense of jus- 
tice, the love of liberty, and the humane and Christian senti- 
ments of all classes. 

Sir, in the i)i-ogress of the contests of the ijast six years be- 
tween the interests of slave labor and the rights of free labor 
in the infant empires we are creating in the West, the power 
of the northern Democracy has been broken, and its leaders 
have inglorionsly fallen. Falling in the great battle of "justice 
IN CONFLICT," in the wordsof Mr. .Jefferson, "-WITH AVARICE AND 
nppKLOssioN," the once powerful chiefs of the northern Democ- 
racy are forced to submit to the bitter mortification of real- 
izing not only their lost power, but their loss of influence in 
the councils of the party they have so faithfully followed. The 
organization of the committees in this chamber cannot but 
remind the Northern Democratic Senators who yet linger here 
of their waningpower over the legislation of the country, over 
tlieir political associates, and their duty to follow rather than 
to lead, to receive orders rather than to give them. Now, the 
leaders of the Democratic party, the men who dictate^ its prin- 
ciples and shape its policj' are in the South. Well might Mr. 
Keitt boastingly say, as he did, on a recent occasion, to the 
peoi)le of South Carolina, "issues have been made which have 
tried the Democratic party ;" "its northern hosts have melted 
away;" "as tlie Northern wing declined, the Southern wing 
strengthened ;" " the slavery agitation has weakened the party 
at the North and strengthened it at the South;" "the whole 
machinery of the party has fallen into the hands of the South," 
and "the South has the general control of the Democratic 
party." 

Having, Mr. President, forced the Northern Democrat.s, by 
threats of political proscription, to repudiate the principle of 
slavery restriction in the Territories; havingforced Mr. Cal- 
houn's dogma upon the Democratic organization; having 
won the "general control," and secured the "whole machine- 
ry," of the Democratic party; these Southern leaders of the 
slave Democracy, now masters of the Government, are pleased 
to assume that the policy of the Republican party, sanctioned 
as it has been by the great statesmen of the past, of the North 
and South, is a policy of aggi-ession upon the South ; and that 
its success in 1860 will be cause for the dissolution of the Union 
and the overthrow of the Republic. The chiefs of the Slave 
Propaganda, the accepted leaders of the Democratic party. 



in the public press, in the forum of the people, in the State 
Legislatures, and in these chambers, are predicting disunion, 
Eirguing disunion, and threatenin.ar disunion. Every breeze 
from the South is burdened with these disunion predictions, 
argruments and threats. In these chambers our ears are fa- 
tigued with listening to these disloyal, unpatriotic, revolu- 
tionary, but, thank God, impotent avowals. Tliat some of the 
actors in this broad farce now beinj; played before the na- 
tion are in earnest, that they would shiver the Union "from 
turret to fomidation stone," no one who iias watched their 
turbulent career can for a moment douijt; Imt the visor of 
their blow is not equal to the vehemence of their desire. 
These actors have before shown that they are quite prudent 
enough to "'let I dare not wait upon Iicoidd.'" This disun- 
ion farce, which the leaders of the slave-extending, slave- 
perpetuating Democracy have put upon the national stage. 
and through the parts of which so many actors are moving 
with such tragic- strut, is intended to startle and apiiall the 
timid, make the servility of the servile still more abject, rouse 
the selfish instincts of that -nerveless conservatism which Iihs 
ever opposed every useful reform, and wailed over every 
rotten nstitution as it fell ; and thus, through the cowardly 
fears and selfishness of the optimists andquietists. retain their 
grasp on power. Sir, we shall see whether this disloyal con- 
spiracy will alarm the eighteen million northern freemen; 
whetber the actors in this disunion farce will play a winning 

fime, or whether the insulted patriotism of the country, 
orth and South, will not rebuke this exhibition of madness 
and folly, and dismiss these actors from the service of that 
Union they threaten to subvert and destroy. 

But this is not, sir, the first time this farce of disunion has 
been played. ^\ hen the Republican party sprung into being 
in 18oti, 10 arrest the aggressions of slavery, to redress the 
•wi'ongs of the people of Kansas, the leading presses and poli- 
ticians of the Democracy in the South then predicted, argued 
and threatened, the dissolution of the Union, if Fremont 
should be elected. The success of this disunion play in 18.5i5, 
as well as their own " yawning need" in 1800, may have prompt 
ed the Democratic managers to put tho old farce upon the 
stage, in the imposing form now witnessed. 

Now, Mr. Pi esident, I intend to iilace before the Senate, 
and, as far as I can, before the patriotic, liberty-loving and 
Union-loving men of the free States, the predictions of disun- 
ion, the arguments for disunion, and the menaces of disunion, 
made by some of the presses and some of the men m the in- 
terests of slavery— presses that are the exi)onents of, and men 
who are the acknowledged leaders of. the sectioualized. slave- 
extending Democracy. I want the ijeople of Massachusetts and 
of the country to see that the political secessit^nists and <iis- 
unionists are the trusted exponents and tlie accepted leaders 
of the National Democracy. I want the alarmed c -nserva- 
tives of the North, who hasten into Union-saving meetings, to 
see and to realize that the men who are now blurting their 
dismiion sentiments into the unwilling ear of a loyal people, 
are the leaders of that party which they by their shrinking 
timidity are upholding in power. I want the deluded masses 
of the northern Democracy to see the hypocris.v, the arrant 
cowardice, of their leaders at home, who are fatiguing the 
weary ear of the country with their worn-out professions of 
love and devotion to the Union, while they dare not rebuke 
the disloyal avowals and menaces of the leaders they follow 
with oraven soul and fettered lip. 

When, Mr. President, the Republican party, summoned into 
being and into action in 1856 by the aggressions of slavery, l)y 
the crimes against the people of Kansas, appealed, in tones as 
earnest as ever issued from human lips, to the American peo- 
ple, to their sense of justice, their love of libei'ty, their emo- 
tions of humanity, and their sentiments of patriotism, to all 
that is highest, noblest, holiest, in human nature, to rescue the 
Government, arrest slavery-extension, redress the wronss of 
the people, and give repose to the country, liy restoring the 
Government to the policy of Washington ami JeiiVrs-m. De- 
mocratic presses and Democratic leaders, whose vital and 
animating principle is the propagation and expansion of hu- 
man slavery on the North American continent, r.u.^i.'d the 
startling war-cry of disunion. Timid and selfish conservatism. 
which saw, uninoved, liberty cloven down in a distant Terri- 
tory, and heard the imploring appeals for protection of free- 
men whose sacked and burning cabins illumed the midnight 
skies, shrank appalled when it heard this cry of disunion, 
opened its long purse, and continued the destinies of the 
country in the keeping of men who avowed their intention to 
ruin if they could not rule it. 

Sir. when that uncertain contest was going on, when the 
election of Fremont seemed to the leaders of the Democracy 
not only possible, but probable, the Senator from Louisiana 
[Mr. Slidell], one of the most skillful leaders of the slave 
Democracy— the acknowledged friend and champion of Mr. 
Buchanan— declared to the country that "if Fremont should 
be elected, the Union would be dissolved." The bold, dash- 
ing, and outspoken Senator from Georgia [:\lr. To(>.-mbs] de- 
clared, with emnhasis, that, "if Fremont was elected, the 
Union would be dissolved, and ought to be dissolved." The 
Senator from Virginia [Mr. .Mason], then, as now, at the head 
of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, who avowed on t!ie floor 
of the Senate that "the South has the ridit to the natural 
expansion of slavery, as an element of political power," de- 
clared in a pulilic letter that unless the aggression upon the 
rights of the South, as he was pleased to designate the resist- 
ance of the people of the North against shu'ery extension, 
ceased, he was for the "separation of these States," .Mr. 
Butler, of South Carolina, then a leading member of the bod.v, 
which placed him at the head of the important Committee of 
the Judiciary, said: 

" When Fremont is elected, we must rely upon what we have 
—a good State Government. Every Governor of the South 
should call the Legislature of his State together, and have 
measures of the South decided upon. If they did nut, and 
sulimit to the degradation, they umild deserve the fate of 
slates. Ifihould advise my Legislature to go at the tap 
of the drum: 



Sir, I might quote other declarations of Senators, in which 
these ideas are expressed ; but I must pass on. In the House, 
as the records will bear evidence, these sentiments were pro- 
fusely uttered by the men who uphold the course of opjires- 
sion in Kansas, and dictated the policy of the Democratic 
party. Mr. Kkitt, in a liery and vehement speech to the peo- 
ple of Lynchburgh, Virginia, exclaimed, in view of the appre- 
hended election of Fremont: 

"I tell you now, that if Fremont is elected, adherence to 
the Union U trea>i07t to liherty. [Loud ciieers.] I tell you 
now, that the Southern man who will submit to his election is 
a traitor and a coward " [Enthusiastic cheers.] 

This speech, so contemptuous, so defiant toward the people 
of the North, so emphatic in its avowals of disunion, w;is 
promptly indorsed as "sound doctrine" by John B. Floyd, now 
.Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of War— a gentleman of whom the 
"iioston Post." the leading Administration organ of New 
England, in 1850 said, "henceforth he must be treated as a 
disunionist, and the most dangerous of them all." Li the 
autuum of l*5ti, Mr. Lrooks, of South Carolina, received from 
the i)eople of his (listi'ict an ovation. Sen-'torBuTLtR and the 
Senator from Geortiia [Mr. Toombs] attended, and other 
Southern Democratic leaders sent applauding letters. To the 
assembled people of liis district, Mr. Brooks said : 

" We have the issue upon us now ; and how are we to meet 
it? I tell you, fellow-citizens, from the bottom of my heart, 
that the only mode which 1 thiidc available for meeting it is 
j/inttutearflce Con.'itiintlon of the JJnitud Staie-^, trample 
■it under foot, and jann a Soitthem Confederacy, e-cery 
Sti/ie of which n:ill be a sluvehokUng State [Loud and 
prolonged cheers.] I lielieve it, as I stand in the face of my 
.Maker ; I believe it on my responsi))ility to you as yourhon- 
ored representative, that tlie only liope of the South is in the 
South, a, fd that the only aradtdde >ne(tn-s of making that 
iWi.te etfectii't is to cut asunder tlie hondn th.a.t tie us to- 
gether and take our separate position in th.efani ily of na- 
tions. These are my opinions. They have always been my 
opinions. Uuive been a disunioniM f rom tlie time I could 
tliink.'' 

"Now, fellow-citizens, I have told you, very frankly arid 
undis-'uise<lly. that I Vielleve the only hope of tlie South is in. 
dissolvinu the londs which connect usicith the Guternrneit 
—in sefxtniiino the licing hod ij from the dead carcass. If 
I was tlie commander of an army, I never icould post a sen- 
tinel iclio /could not sn-ear that slavery is right:' 

"I speak on mv individual responsibility : If Fremwtt l^e 
elected I'residpntofthe United States, I am for the people. 
in their majesty ri--<in(j cdioxt the hi'w and leaders, taking 
the piacer into 'th.cir oirn hands, goinghy concert, ornuthy 
concert, and la ying the strong ami of Soidhern freeme>i 
■upon, the Treasury and archives of the Government:'' 
[Applause.] 

These emphatic avowals of disunion were applauded by the 
people who liad, by a unanimous vote, sustained his action, 
and commissioned him to speak for them in this capitol. U ell 
might the " Charleston Mercury" declare, as it has, that— 

" Upcm the policy (f dissolving the Union, of separating 
the Snuihf/'iim her JSorihern enemies, and e-^aLlishing a 
Southern (/onfedcracy. parties, jj refuses, politicians and. 
peojile <eere a unit. There i!< not a single jmhlic man in 
her It mils, not one or her pr-esenr liepre-^entatives or Sen c- 
tiiiK in ( 'OfKjrc-sx. n-iii) i-s rait pledged to the lijjs in favor of 
di^u.riiim. Indeeil, we well remember that one of the most 
prominent leaders of the co-operation party, when taunted 
with submission, relmked the thought liy saying, • that in op- 
posing Secession, he only took a utep hackicurd to strike a 
blow more deadly against the Union: " 

Sir, the erratic, aspiring, ItlusteringAVise, who " would intro- 
duce slavery into the heart of the North," who "would allow 
slavery to pour itself out without restraint, and find no limit 
))ut the Southern Ocean," in the autumn of 1856 told the peo- 
ple of Virginia that— 

"The South could not, without degradation, submit to the 
election of a Black hepublican President. To tell me we 
should sulmiit to the election of a Black Republican, under 
circmustances like these, is to tell me that Virginia and the 
fourteen slave States are already subjugated and degraded, 
[cheers;] that the Southern p-ople are without spirit and 
without puriiose to defend tlie riahts they know and dare not 
maintain. [Cheers.] If you submit to the election _of Fre- 
mont, you will prove what Seward and Burlingame snid to be 
true— that the South cannot be kicked out of the Union." 

He avowed his readiness to put the military force of Virgi- 
nia upon a war footing; and he gave the v.alorous assurance 
to ills disunion associates that " the chivalry" of Virginia 
"would hew its liright way through all opposing legions." 
Rumor said, and I lielieve truly, tliatthis Democratic aspirant 
to the Presidency held correspondence with Southern Goven;- 
ors to concert measures preparatory to disunion ; that he and 
his disunion compeers organized a plot to seize the arsenal at 
Harper's Ferry, to take possession of the navy-yard at Nor- 
folk, and inaugur te rebellion, revolution and disunion, in the 
event of Fremont's success. 

The Wasliuiston correspondent of the " New Orleans Delta," 
a journal high in the confidence of the Pierce administration, 
wrote : 

" It is already arranged, in the event of Fremont's election, 
or a failure to elect by the people, to call the Legislatures of 
Virdiiia, South Carolina, and Georgia, to concert mea^uresto 
withdraw from the Union before Fremont can get possession 
of the army and navy and the purse-strings of Govern- 
ment. Governor Wise is actively at icork already in the 
nadter. The South can rely on the Pre-ndentin the erne-- 
gency contemplated. The question now is, whether thepeo- 
ple of the South will sustain their leaders." 

Mr. Corrv, of Ohio, reports Mr. Banks, of Virginia, as hav- 
ing said to him, a few days after the election in 185G, that— 



" The South would have dissolved the Union, if Fremont 
had been elected President of the United States ; that Go v- 
ei-nor Wise and the Virginia leaders wete ready to take the 
field— march on Washington, depose the Federal officers, take 
the Treasury, archives, buildings, grounds, etc.— declare the 
Confederation de facto overthrown. He said the thing: would 
have been easy; there were thirty thousand men ready ; twen- 
ty thousand cavalry ; sets of accoutrements : that the public 
iiiind was sufficiently excited to overcome all domestic resist- 
ance, and that they could whip the North in the fight." 

A Union meeting was recently held atKnoxville, Tennessee. 
At thi-; meeting. Judge Daily, recently of Georgia, submitted 
a. series of resolutions as an amendment to the resolutions of 
tlie committee, and made an extreme Southern speech in sup- 
port of them. In this speech he said that^ 

"During the Presidential contest. Gov. Wise had addressed 
letters to all the Southern Governors, and that tlie, one to the 

(hwernor of Floridahad'been slioion Mm, in ivldch Gov. 

Wlfi& Sidd that he, had an army in readiness to prevent 
Fi'emontfroni taking his seat if elected, and asking the co- 
operation of those to whom he wrote." 

Evidence of this disloyal, revolutionary and treasonable 
course of Henry A. Wise is also furnished Ijy Charles.!. Faulk- 
ner, late Representative of the Harper's Ferry district, chair- 
man of the Congressional Democratic Committee in 1856, and 
now Minister to France. At a Democratic meeting recently 
held in Virginia, over which Mr. Faulkner presided, he said: 

"W^hen that noble and gallant son of Virginia, Henry .A. 
Wise, declared, as was said he did in October, 185G, that, if 
Fremont should be elected, he would skize the national au- 
sp;nal at Harper's Kerry, how few would, at that time, have 
justified so bold and decided a measui'e? It in the fortune 
of some great and gifted minds to see far in advance of 
vieir cotemvo}-aries. Should William 11. Seward be elected 
in 18fi0, where is the man x\Q'^\\^owxm\<\.ilwho^oouldnotc^dl 
for tlie impeachment of a Governor of Virginiatoho would 
silenUy siiffer tJiat armory tojjass under the control of such 
an Executive headV 

This "noble and gallant son of Virginia," who, in lS.5fi, 
"saw far in advance of his coteinporaries," who was ready, 
if Fremonthad been elected, "to seize the arsenal at Harper's 
Ferry," is now looking with hungry eye to the Cliarleston Con- 
vention, and is now the applauded and favorite hero of ;i class 
of men in the N'orth who are stammering into the ears of a 
doubting people their uxorious love of the Union; and this 
iJemocratic orator, who would demand the iinjieachment of a 
Governor of Virginia if he should permit the arsenal at llar- 
l>er's Ferry to pass under the control of William H. Seward, 
if elected to the Presidency, is nominated )jy a Democratic 
President, and confirmed l)y the united voice of the Demo- 
ci'atjc Senators, to represent the liepulilic at the court of 
Ijouis Napoleon. Tliis Democratic Administration, and this 
Democratic party, which invokes the suppoit of the Union- 
loving, conservative men of the free States, send to the proud- 
est monarch of the Old World the man who uttered this insur- 
rectionary and disloyal sentiment. Yes. sir; Democrats, with 
t!ie accents of Union upon their lips, sanction the apiiointment 
of a man who is avowedly in favor of civil war and disunion. 
Let tlie real friends of law, of order, of the unity o the lie- 
public, mark and remember this want of fidelity to the Union, 
by the Administration and the men who lead the Democratic 
party. 

Sir, the Richmond Enquirer," the leading Democratic or- 
gan south of the Potomac, during the canvass of 18.5ii, avow- 
e<lly advocated disunion. That exponent of the slave De- 
niocracy said : 

"Sumner, and Sumner's friends, must be punished and si- 
lenced. Either such wretches must be hung or put in the pen- 
itentiary, or the South should prepare at once to quit the 
Union." 

" If Fremont is elected, the Union will not last an hour after 
Mr. Pierce's term expires." 

"If Fremont is elected, it will be the duty of the South to 
dissolve tlie Union and form a Southern Confederacy." 

" Let the South present a compact and undivided front. Let 
her, if possible, detach Pennsylvania andsoutliern Ohio, south- 
ern Indiana., and southern Illinois, from the North, and make 
the highlands between the Ohio and the lakes the dividing 
line. Let the South treat with California; and, if necessary, 
ally herself with Russia, with Cuba and Brazil." 

Sir, this journal, which, during the canvass, avowed the 
r:'nkest disunion sentiments— this journal, which had been the 
t!-iini))et of the alarmists, after the election had ))een won by 
the aid, the "material aid," of alarmed and quaking conserv- 
atism, very naively announced to the victims of this disunion 
p-i.nic \\vA\,"' Governor Wise threatened, disunion only to 
s. in' the Union!'' Yes, sir; tlie valiant Wise, ready to put 
t i;:" military lorce of iiis dominions on a war footing; ready to 
h"\v iiis I(ri;dit v/ay through all opposing legions; ready to 
S'^ize liarper's Ferry,' "only threatened disunion to save the 
Union !" Patriotic Wise ! Who, in view of the sagacious pa- 
triotism of that "noble and gallant son of Virginia," will not 
arcept the tribute of the admiring Faulkner, that "it is the 
f irtime of some great and gifted minds to see far in advance 
of their contemporaries?" May not shivering, despairing 
conservatism indulge the faint hope thaf other "noble and 
gallant sons of Virginia" and of the sunny South may, in hum- 
ble imitation of the far-seeing Wise, be "threatening disunion 
only. to save the Union ?" 

We are entering, .Mr. President, upon another Presidential 
election ; another great strug!,de for supremacy in the national 
comicils lietween the ojjposing forces of slavery extension and 
slavery restriction. The nation once more presents to man- 
kind "ttie interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with ava- 
rice and oppression" This "conflict" is stirring the country 
to its profoundest depths. Conscious of their waning power, 
the advocates of slavery extension are again haughtily mena- 
cingthedissolution of the Union in the event of their defeat 



by the people. Again, in the public press, in assemblages of 
the people, in State legislatures, and m these chambers, dis 
loyal and revolutionary threats are made, to intimidate tha 
people. 

Sir, the Senator from Georgia, before the meeting of Con- 
gress, boasted before the people of his State, that "the proud 
and enviable condition of the poor men in the South, compared 
to the degraded white slaves of the North, is owing to the 
existence of African slavery in the South." 

Mr, Iverson. W'ill the Senator allow me to ask which Sena- 
tor from Georgia he refers to? 

Mr. Wilson. The Senator who is now on the floor. 

Mr. Iverson. Then, that is a mistake. I never used any 
such language. 

Mr. Wilson. I quoted it from a Georgia paper, which pub- 
lished it at the time. 

Mr. Iverson. I deny it positivel.v. My speech is on record 
and in print. The gentleman shall have a copy of it, if he 
wants one. 

Mr. Wilson. It was a speech made in Georgia during the 
summer. 

Mr. Iverson. I made no such declaration as that. What I 
did say was simply this: that the condition of African slavery 
at the South elevated the poor white man ; but I did not speak 
of the poor people of the North as slaves, by any means. 

Mr. Wilson. Then the Senator is misquoted ))y his own 
papers, and I withdraw it as far as that is concerned. I will 
go on with the rest of the quotation from the same speech, and 
the Senator can deny that or not. The Senator, at the same 
meeting where he is reported to have used the words which 
he now disclaims, and which I am glad he disclaims, is re- 
ported to have said : 

"Slavery musthe maintained— in the Union, ifvossihle; 
O'utofit, if necessary; peaceably if we may, forcibly if 
we musty 

Mr. Iverson. I said that. 

Mr. Wilson. And the Senator drew this flattering view of a 
Southern Confederation : 

"In a confederated government of their own, the southern 
States would enjoy sources of wealth, prosperity and power 
uiisiu)iasst(l by any n;ition on earth. No neutrality laws would 
rest-rain our adventurous sons. Our expanding policy would 
stretch far beyond present limits. Central America^ would 
join her destiny to ours, and so would Cuba, now witliheld 
from us by the voice and votes of Abolition enemies." 

Coming in this chamber, the honorable Senator early sought 
occasion to say : 

" Sir, I will tell you what I would do, if I had the control of 
the Sonthern members of this house and the other, when you 
elect .h)HN- SuEKMAN. If I had control of the public sentiment, 
the very moment you elect .John Sherman, thus giving to the 
South tlie example of insult as well as injury, I would walk, 
every one of us, out of the halls of this capitol, and consult 
our constituents: and I would never enter again until I was 
bade to do so Ijy those who iiad the right to control me. Sir, 
I go further than that. I would counsel my constituents in- 
stantly to dissolve all political ties with a party and a people 
who thus trample on our rights. That is what I would do." 

In a carefully-prepared and very elaborate speech recently 
delivered, the Senator fi om Georgia said: 

"Sir, there is but one path of safety to the South; but one 
mode of preserving her institution of domestic slavery; and 
that i<5, a confederacy of States having no incongruous and 
opposing elements— a confederacy of slave States alone, with 
homogeneous language, laws, interests and institutions. Un- 
der such a conlederated republic, with a constitution which 
should shut out the approach and entrance of all incongruous 
and conflicting elements, which should protect tlie institution 
from change, and keep the whole nation ever bound to its 
preservation by an unchangeable fundamental law, the fifteen 
slave States, with their power of expansion, would present to 
the world the most free, prosperous and happy nation on the 
face of the wide earth. 

"Sir, with these views, and with the firm conviction which 
I have entertained for many years, and Avliich recent events 
have only seemed to confirm, that the 'irrepressible conflict' 
between the two sections must and will go on, and with accu- 
mulated siieed. ;iiid must end, in the Union, with the total ex 
tinction cf African slavery in the southern States, that I have 
announced my determination to approve and urge the south 
ern St;ites to dissolve the Union upon the election of a Black 
Republican to the Presidency of the United States by a sec- 
tional Northern party, and upon a platform of opposition and 
hostility to Southern slavery." 

The Senator from Mississiiipi [Mr. Brown], in the speech to 
his constituents from which I have already quoted, and in 
which he avows his desire to acquire territory in Central 
America and Mexico "to plant slavery in," says: 

"Whether we can obtain the territory while the Union lasts, 
I do not know ; I fear we cannot. But I would make an hon- 
est elFort, and if we failed, 1 would go out of the Union, and 
try it there. I speak plainly— I would make a refusal to ac- 
quire territory, because it was to be slave territory, a cause for 
disunion, just as I would make the refusal to admit a new 
State, because it was to be a slave State, a cause for disunion." 

Surely no one can m.istake the position of the Senator. If 
the people of the free States, who believe slavery to be what 
Henry Clay said it was, "a curse," "a wrong— a grievous 
wrong," that "no contingency could make right," should re- 
fuse to acquire territory "because it was to be slave territory," 
he would make that refusal "cause for disunion." _ The Sena- 
tor has laid upon our desks an address, delivered in the cai^i- 
tol of the Sta'te he so ably and faithfully represents; and in 
this address, I find this declaration: 

"The election of i\[r. Sewarp, or any other man of hispirty, 
is not, -per se, justifiable ground for dissolving the Union. But 



the act of putting the Government in the hands of men who 
mean tc use it for our subju?:ation. ouprht to l)e resisted, even 
to the disruption of every tie that binds us to the Union." 

On the eth of July, the Senator from Jlississippi [Mr. D.wis,] 
\^-hose ability and large and varied information are acknow- 
ledged by the Senate and the country, delivered an elaborate 
address to the people of his State. By common consent, the 
country recognizes the Senator from Mississippi as one of the 
foremost leaders of his section and his party, and his opinions 
command attention and consideration. In this address, the 
hoi-orable !<enator says: 

" For myself, I say, as I said on a former occasion, in the 
contingency of the election of a President on the platform of 
Mr. Sewakd's Rochester speech, let the Union be dissolved. 
Xet the ' great but not the gi-eatest of evils' come." 

On the 11th of November. 1*58. after his return from a visit 
of several months to New I'lngland, the Senator addressed the 
people of his State at Jackson. In this address, the Senator 
is reported to have said, '"if the Uepublicans should elect a 
I'resiilent, the question would be presented, what should the 
gouth do ? For his part, he had but one crn-'iirer to give. W hen 
that happened, when the Government was in hostile hands, 
when the Presidency and the iiouses of legislation were con- 
trolled l)y the enemies of the South, he iva-ijor o.sserth/o t/ie 
independence of Mi^-^hvippi ; he ■icat<for iin.ytediate iciih- 
drcnad /■ o/n the Union:' And in view of the aspect of 
public affairs, the honorable Senator "advised the people of 
the South to turn their old muskets into Minie rifles, prepare 
powder, shot, sliell, ammmiition of all kinds, and fortifications, 
BO as to l)e ready against any emergency." 

The Senator from Alal)ama [Mr. Clay] early addressed the 
Senate upon the resolution introduced l)y the Senator from 
Virginia, [.Mr. M.^SON;] and in thisspeecli, prepared with the 
elaborate care that Senator is accustomed to bestow ui)on the 
Eubjects he discusses here, the Senator assumes, in effect, the 
position that it is impossible for the people of the South to live 
under a (Government administered by the liepublicau party. 
He asks: 

"Do you suppose that we intend to bow our necks to the 
yoke ? that we intend to submit to the domination of our ene- 
mies? tiiat we intend to sit here in your presence as hostages 
for the good l)ehavior of our conquered people— apeople who 
will l)e, under your administration, not as sovereigns to rule 
but as subjects to be governed ?" 

In response, the Senator says : 

"I make no predictions, no promise for my State; but, in 
conclusion, will only say. that if she is faithful to the pledges 
she has made and principles she has professed— if she is true 
to her own interest and her own honor— if she is not recreant 
to all that State pricle, integi-ity and duty demand— she will 
never sul)mit to your authority. I will add. that unl ss she, 
and all the southern States of tliis Union, witli perliai)S but 
two. or, at most, three exceptions, are not faithless to the 
pledges they have given, then Kill never .sidmiittflthe gov- 
ernmentof a Preaid.entprofe^Hing your political faitli and 
elected by your aectional rrutjority:'' 

When the Senator from Alabama took his seat, the Senator 
from California [.Mr. tJAVix] rose, and declared that he con- 
sidered "it as the inevitable result, that the South should pre- 
pare for resistance in the event of the election ot a Itepuljlican 
President." The Senator went on to argue that the South 
must, could and would, dissolve tiie Union, if the Republican 
party succeed in the coming election. Tluit Senator went on 
to show how the South could carry out the scheme of dis- 
union; how she could seize the imblic property witliin her 
limits; that, by doing so, before the (iovernment passed into 
the control of such an .\dministration. it could put it out of 
the power of the .Administration to administer the Govern- 
ment in that i)ortion of the couiiti-y. And he declar^'d that 
"it is impossible for a I'epublican President to administer this 
Government over the slavoholding States of the Confederacy;" 
and that "the election of a Republican President is the inevi- 
table destruction of this Confederacy." 

The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] began his speech 
yesterday by solemnly announcing that the country was in the 
midst of a civil revolution, and closed it by imploring the free- 
men of the State he represents to "redeem their pledge," and 
"never permit this Federal Government to pass into tlie trai- 
torous hands of the lilack Kepublican party." He calls upon 
the people of Georgia to "listen to 'no vain babblings," to no 
treacherous jargon about 'overt acts;' they hav already 
been committed. Defend yourselves, the enemy is at your 
door; wait not to meet him at tlie heartlistone— meet him at 
the doorsill. and drive him from the temiile of liberty, or pull 
down its pillars and involve him in a common ruin." 

The Senator from North Carolina [Mr. Cling.m.\.n] assures us 
that in the South "there are hundieds of disunionists now 
where there was one ten years ago;" that in some of the 
States men who "would willingly to-day seethe Union dis- 
solved" are in the majority, and in other States a large class 
of men are "ready to unite with them upon the happenmg of 
a cause." And he says : 

" In my judgment, the election of the Presidential candidate 
of the illack Republican party will furnish that cause." 

To the suggestion that they "ought to wait for some overt 
act," the Senator says: 

'"So oihev ' overt act' can so imperatively demand resist- 
ance on our part as the simple election of their candidate. 
Their organization is one of avowed hostility, and they conie 
against us as enemies." 

Referring to the distinguished Senator from New York [Mr. 
Sew.^ku], he declares that — 

"The objections are not personal merely to this Senator, 
but apply equally to any member of the party elected by it. 
It has, in fact, been suggested that, as a matter of prudence, 
for the first e.ection they should choose a Southern freesoiler. 



Would the colonies have submitted more vrillinglj to Benedict 
Arnold than to Lord Cornwallis?" 

But the Senator seems to be in favor of the secession of the 
States, but not of the secession of members of Congress. He 
says : 

"I may say, however, that I do not think there will be anv 
secession of the Southern members of Congress from this Cap- 
itol. It has always struck me that this is a point not to be 
voluntarily surrendered to the public eueniy." 

The Senator from North Carolina evidently indulges in the 
pleasing illusion that "the public enemy." as he is pleased to 
characterize liis fellow-countrymen, will abandon tlie Capitol, 
if ■"the southern Uiembers of Congress" remain in the Capi- 
tol. "If lives should be lost here," exclaims the Senator 
"it would seem poetically just that this should occur !" If, 
after this declaration of seeming v.alor, the RepU' licans, in 
the event of their success in November, do not flee from the 
Capitol with as much haste as did the "chivalry" of this re- 
gion in the late war with Kngland, I am quite sure the Senator 
from North Carolina, who is "struck" with the original idea 
" that this is a point not to be voluntarily surrendered to the 
pui'lic enemy," will be disappointed in his expectations, tut 
the Senator goes on to express his emotions of contempt for 
men of the non-resistant school. "I cannot find," says the 
Senator, " words enoug to express my abhorrence and detest- 
ation of such creatures as Garris<ur and Wendell Phillips, who 
stimulate others to deeds of lilood, and, at the same tiuie, are 
so cowardly that they avoid all dangei- themselves." This 
expression of " alihoirence and detestation" of such non- 
comliatauts, such "cowardly" creatures, is, 1 suppose, intend- 
ed to admonish us on this side of the chamber tiiat the Sena- 
tor is terribly in eainest when he makes proclamation of his 
wishes in these words: 

"" Ai' from this Capitol so much has gone forth to inflame 
the T'uhlic mind, if our countrymen are to be intohed ina 
bloody struggle, I trust in God that the first fruits of flie 
collision may be reaped hei-e.'' 

This language, Mr. President, admits of but one interpreta- 
tion. Gentlemen from the South, who are in favor of a disso- 
lution of the I'nion. do not intend, in so doing, to secede from 
this Capitol, nor surrender it to tliose who may reu'ain within 
the I'nion. l!a\ing dechired that, if lives are to be sacrificed, 
it will be poetically just tliat they should be sacrificed liere on 
this floor: and that, as so much has gone forth from this Capi- 
tol to inflame the pul)lic mind, it is but proper that the first 
fruit of the strucL'le should Vie I'eaped here, the Senator gives 
us, therefore, distinctly to undei'stand that there nniy be a ph.v- 
src;d collision -"a liloody struggle;" that the scene of this 
conflict is to he the legislative halls of this Capitol. To simply 
say, in reiily to this threat, that northern senators cannot thus 
be intimidated, is too tame and conuuonplace to meet the ex- 
igency. 'J'herefm-e, I take it upon myself to inform t!ie Senator 
from North Carolina, that the peoide of the frt e States have 
sent their representatives here, not to fight, lait to legislate* 
not t(; mingle in personal combats, but to delil)erate foi- the 
good of the whole country: not to shed the blood of tlieir fel- 
low members, but to maintam the suiiremacy of the Constitu- 
tion and upliold the Union— and this they will endeavor to do 
here, in the legislative halls of the Cai)itol, at all events and at 
every hazard. In the peiformance of their duties, they will 
not invade the I'i-dits of others, nor permit any infringement 
of their own. They will invite no collision, they will com- 
mence no attack ; but they will discharge all their obligations 
t<.> their constituents, and maintain the Government and insti- 
tutions of their country in the face of all conceivable conse- 
quenc'S. \\ hoever thinks otherwise has not studied either 
the history of the people of the free States, or the char;icterof 
the men dwelling in that section of the Union, or the philoso- 
phy of the exiirency which the Senator from North Carolina 
seems to invoke. The freemen of the North have not been ac- 
customed to vaunt their courage in woi'ds; they have preferred 
to illustrate it by dftds. They are not tighting men by profes- 
sion, nor accustomed to street broils, nor contests on the 
"field of honor," falsely so called, nor are they habitual wear- 
ers of deadly weapons. Therefore it is that when driven into 
bioody collisions, and esi)ecially on sudden emergencies, it is 
as true in fact as it is sound in philosoidiy. that they are more 
desperate and determined, and n. ore reckless of consequences 
to themsehes and to tiieir antagonists, th;ni are those who are 
more accustomed to contemplate such collisions. The tightest 
band, when once bi-oken. recoils with the wildest power. So 
mucli for the peojile of the free States. As to their represent- 
atives in this Caiiitol I will say, that if, while in the discharge 
of their <luties here, they are assaulted with deadly intent, I 
.give the Sen;itor h'om North Carolina due notice, here, to-day, 
that those assaults will l)e repelled and retaliated by sons who 
will not dishonor fathers that fou^dit at Bunker Hill and con- 
quered at Saratoga, that trampled tlie soil of Chippewa and 
Lundy"s Lane to a Idoody niire, and vindicated sailors' rishts 
and national honor on the liigh seas in the second war of inde- 
pendence. Keluctant to enter into such a contest, yet, once 
in, they will be quite as reluctant to leave it. 'J'hougli they 
may not be tlie first to go into tiie struggle, they wiiri)e the 
last to abandon it in dishonor. Though tiiey will not provoke 
nor coiimience the conflict, they will do their l>est to conquer 
when the strife begins. So much their constituents will de- 
mand of them when the "bloody struggle" the Senator con- 
templates is forced upon them; and they will not he disap- 
pointed when the exigency comes. I say no more ; I wait the 
issue, and bide my time. 

Mr. President, during the protracted and excited contest in 
the other end of the Capitol, the leaders of the Democracy 
have avowee! the rankest disunion sentiments; and these 
avowals of disloyalty to the Union have been often raptur- 
ously apiilauded on the Democratic side of the chaml)er, and 
in the galleries, crowded, as they have often been, by (lovern- 
ment oflicials or Government contractois or dependents. Sir, 
if the Union-lovin.sr, liberty-loving, patriotic men of the coun- 
try could have heard these menaces of disunion ; could have 



witnessed the applauding: throngs in the galleries, and the ap- 
plauding Democracy on the floor; and could have witnessed 
the Democratic smiles, the Democratic nods, and 'he Demo- 
cratic congratulations, they would visit upon the actors in this 
farce, and upon their compeers here and at home, the stern 
rebuke and withering scorn of an indignant people. 

Early in the session, Mr. Nelson, of Tennessee, a distin- 
guished member of the Southern Opposition, rebuked the dis- 
tmion sentiments which had been so profusely scattered 
through the debates by the secessionists; and he avowed his 
devotion to the Union in tones of thrilling eloquence. His 
patriotic and national sentiments received the enthusiastic 
applause of the Southern Opposition and the Repu))licans. 
The patriotic sentiments of the eloquent Tennessean, remind- 
ing us of the days, before the advent into these halls of the 
secession disciples of Calhoun, when the followers of Clay — 
ay, a.nd of Jackson, too — had made the chambers echo with 
sentiments of devotion to tiie Union, seemed to grate harshly 
upon Democratic ears. 

Mr, Pkyor, of Vu-ginia, who, in 1836, as one of the editors of 
the "Richmond Enquirer," echoed the disunion sentiments of 
Gov. Wise, rose and propounded to Mr. Nelson this question : 

"Would you be willing William H. Seward should take 
possession of the army, the navy, and all the powers of tlie 
Government— I mean all the constitutional i)0\vers of the 
President of the United States? Would he allow William H, 
Skward to take possession of tiiese powers, or would he resist 
it even to the extent of going out of the Union ?" 

Sir, this question clearly implied that Mr. Pryor would re- 
sist, even to the extent of going out of the Union, the inau- 
guration of William 11. Skward. But that was early in the 
session. Gov. AVise, who, if Faulkner is to t)e relied upon, 
"sees far in advance of his contemporaries," had not then 
avowed his resolution to fight in the Union, and to stay in the 
Union. The "Enquirer," the family organ, which is engaged 
in warning the people of tlie South not to "precipitate dis- 
union, but to prepare for it," has made the wonderful discov- 
ery that "the election of a Black Kepublican advocate of the 
'irrepressible conflict' will be the withdrawal of the States 
supporting such election from the Union." As Gov. Wise 
has resolved to fight in the Union, and as his family organ has 
declared that the election of a Kepul)lican is a withdrawal ol 
the States supporting his election from the Union, Mr. Pryor 
will not now resist the inauguration of Wiu.iam H. Sewarh, 
"to the extent of going out of the Union," but cling to this 
new " Virginia abstraction," and assume that the States voting 
for Mr. Seward are out of the Union. 

Jlr. Curry, of Alabama, in a speech which is by far the most 
c omprehensive and philosophical presentation of the issues 
yet made on the slavery side, in the House, said : 

" However distasteful it niay be to my friend from New York 
[Mr. Clark], however much it m;ty revolt the public sentiment 
or conscience of this country, I am not asliamed or afraid 
publicly to avow that the election of \Villl\m H. Seward or 
Salmon P. Chase, or any such representative of the Repub- 
lican party, upon a sectional platforru, ought to be resisted to 
the disruption of every tie that binds this Confederacy to- 
gether." [Applause on the Democratic side of the House.] 

Mr, PoGH, of the same State, in a speech of much rhetorical 
beauty and eloquence, said : 

"If, with the character of the Government well defined, and 
the rights and privileges of the parties to the compact clearly 
asserted by the Democratic partj', the Black Hepublicans get 
possession of the Government, then the question is fully pre- 
sented, whether ttie southern States will I'emain in the Union, 
as subject and degraded colonies, or will they withdraw and 
establish a southern Confederacy of coequal homogeneous 
sovereigns ? 

"In my judgment, the latter is the only course compatible 
with the honor, equality, and safety of the South ; and the 
sooner it is known and acted upon the better for all parties to 
the compact. 

" The truest conservatism and wisest statesmanship demand 
a speedy termination of all association with such confederates, 
and the formation of another Union of States, homogeneous 
in population, institutions, interests and pursuits." 

Mr. Moore, of the same State, said : 

"I do not concur with the declaration made yesterday by 
the gentleman from Tennessee, that the election of a Black 
Republican to the Presidency was not cause for a dissolution of 
the Union. Whenever a President is elected by a fanatical ma- 
jority at the North, those whom I represent, as I believe, and 
the gallant State which I in part represent, are ready, let the 
consequences be what they may, to fall back on their reserved 
rights, and say : 'As to this Union, we have no longer any lot 
or part in it.' " 

Mr. Boyce, of South Carolina, before the meeting of Con- 
gress, addressed his constituency in an elaborate and very 
carefully-prepared speech, in which he says that the election of 
a President by the Republican party " would constitute of itself 
a good reason why the South should refuse to submit to their 
rule." "Our policy is, first, to prevent, if possible, the elec- 
tion of a Republican President ; second, if this must occur, in 
spite of all our wise exertions to the contrary, to cause it to 
occur under such issues as will best enable us to set up a south- 
ern Government." "The great point then, is to ripen pubUc 
opinion at the South for a dissolution of the Union in the con- 
tingency referred to— the election of a Republican President." 
He avows that "it is the fixed policy of this State to secede as 
soon as the Republican party elect their President." " If we 
desire to ripen public opinion among ourselves for south- 
ern independence, in the event of the election of a Republican 
President, we must exercise the policy of moderation in our 
movements preliminary to that result. We must use the most 
consummate prudence now, that we may i e able to profit by 
the most desperate boldness then." 

Mr. BoNHAM, of the same State, said, on the floor of the 
House : 



*' As to disunion, upon the election of a Black Republican, I 
can speak for no one but myself and those I have here the 
honor to represent: and I say, without hesitation, that, upon 
the election of Mr. Seward, or any other man who indorses 
and proclaims the doctrines held by him and his party— call 
him by what name you please— I am in favor of an immediate 
dissolution of the Union. And, sir, I think I speak the senti- 
ments of my own constituents and the State of South Carolina, 
when I say so." 

" Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, as a quotation from his speech 
will show, spoke not only for himself, but for his associates 
fi'om that State, and his disunion sentiments received the ap- 
plause of his Democratic friends : 

" Now, in regard to the election of a Black Republican Presi- 
dent, I have this to say, and I speak the sentiment of every 
Democrat on this floor from the State of Georgia; we will 
never submit to the inauguration of a Black Republican I'l-esi- 
dent. [Applause from the Democratic benches, and hisses 
from the Repuljlicans.] I repeat it, sir— and I have authority 
to say so— that no Democratic Representative from Georgia on 
tfiis floor will ever submit to the inauguration of a Black Re- 
pul;lican Pesident. [Ilenewed applause and hisses] . 
The most confiding of them all are, sir, for "equality in the 
Union or independence out of it;' having lost all hope in the 
former, I am for 'independence now and independence for- 
ever !' " 

Mr. Gartrell. also of Georgia, has supported the position 
assumed by Mr. Crawford. He declares : 

"Just so sure as the Republican party succeeds in electing a 
sectional man, upon their sectional, anti-slavery platfojin, 
breathing destruction and death to the rights of my people, 
just so sure, in my judgment, the time will have come when 
tlie South Uiust and will take an unmistakable and decided ac- 
tion, and tliat then, 'he who dallies is a dastard, and he who 
doubts is damned.' I need not tell what I, as a southern man, 
will do— I think I may safely speak for the masses of the peo- 
ple of Georgia— that when that event happens, they, in my 
judgment, will consi'ier it an overt act, a declaration of war, 
aiid meet inunediately in convention, to take into considera- 
tion the mode and measure of redress. That is my position; 
and if that be treason to the Government, make the most of 
it." 

Governor McRae, of Mississippi, declared that he was not 
willing to submit to the election of a Republican President 
upon a Republican platform: 

"I said to my constituents, and to the people at the capital 
of my State, on my way here, t at if such an event did occur, 
wiiile it would l)e their duty to determine the course which the 
State would i)ursue, it would he my privilege to counsel with 
them aj to what I l)elieved to be the proper course ; and I said 
to tliem, what I say now, and will always say in such an event, 
that my counsel would be to take independence out of the 
Union in jn-eference to the loss of constitutioral rights and 
consequent degradation and dishonor in it. That is my posi- 
tion, and it is the position which I know the Democratic party 
of the State of iMississippi will maintain." 

Mr. 1)E Jarnettr, of Virginia, will resist the inauguration 
of the candidate of the Republican party, if that candidate is 
Mr. Seward, for he says: 

"Thus William H. Seward stands before the country a per- 
jured traitor; and yet that man, with hands stained with the 
blood of our citizens, we are asked to elect President of the 
United States. You may elect him President of the North. 
but of the South never. Whatever the event may be, others 
may differ; but Virginia, in view of her ancient renown, in 
view of her illustrious dead, and in view of her sic semper 
tyi-annis, will resist his authority. I have done." 

Mr. Leake, unlike his colleague, Mr. Pryor. will not follow 
the lead of the late Governor Wise and fight inside the Union, 
Mr. Leake evidently does not see so far in advance as does 
that noble son of Virginia. He says : 

"I repudiate tiie sentiment which the gentleman ascribes to 
the late Govei'nor of Virginia. 1 choose rather to refer to the 
representatives of that State to hear her sentiments, than to 
any other source. It never entered my head, and I undertake 
to say that it never entered the brain of any representative 
of Virginia on this floor, to fight inside of this Union. The 
idea is ridiculous in the extreme. It is the reductio ad ah- 
Hurdum.'" 

And Mr. Leake emphatically declares that 

" Virginia has the right, when she pleases, to withdraw from 
the Confederacy. [Applause from the Democratic benches.] 
. . . That is her doctrine. We will not fight in the Union, 
but quit it the instant we think proper to do so." 

Mr. Singleton, of Mississippi, openly avows, on the floor of 
the House, that "their determination is fixed and unaltera- 
ble; that they will have an expansion of slave territory in tlie 
Union if you will allow it, or outside of the Union if they must;" 
a.d that sentiment was received with Democratic applause. 
He goes on to say: 

"The question now is, if we sever the connection which 
binds us and the North together, how are we to i)reserve the 
institution of slavery? There is but one mode by which, in my 
humble judgment, it can be perpetuated for any considerable 
number of years. . . . That mode is by expansion, and 

that expansion must be in the direction of Mexico 

There is in Mexico a large extent of territory that is suited to 
the cultivation of cotton, sugar, and rice. In my opinion, we 
must, and we are compelled, to expand in that direction, and 
thus perpetuate it— a hundred or a thousand yea^rs, it may 
be." . . . 

"It may be asked, when will the time come when we shall 
separate tVom the North? I say, candidly, if the views ex- 
pressed by the gentleman from Iowa are, as he says, common 
to the Republican party, and if they are determined to enforce 



those views, I declare myself ready to-day. I would not ask 
to delay the time a single hour." ... 

"You ask me, when will the time come? when will the 
South be united ? It will be when you elect a Black Republi- 
can—Hale, Seward, or Chase— President of the United States. 
Whenever you undertake to place such a man to preside over 
the destinies of the South, you may expect to see us undivided 
and indivisible friends, and to see all parties of the South ar- 
rayed to resist his inauguration." ... 

" We can never quietly stand by and permit the control of 
the army and navy to go into the hands of a Black Republican 
President." 

Union sentiments, whenever or by whomsoever uttered, 
grate harshly on Democratic ears tuned to the accents of dis- 
union. When Mr. Stokes, of Tennessee, the other day, re- 
buked the disloyal sentiments which fell so glibly from Demo- 
cratic lips— when he,in eloquent, manly and patriotic language, 
declared his devotion to the Union— when he quoted, and 
indorsed as his own, the words of Henry Clay, "that he would 
consent to the dissolution of the Union — never! never!! 
never ! ! !"— the Democracy foamed and gnashed its teeth in 
impotent wrath. 

Governor Letcher, of Virginia, in his recent message to the 
Legislature of his State, avows the rankest disunion and revo- 
lutionary sentiments. In this document, he declares that if a 
Kepublican President is elected in 1860, 

"It is useless to attempt to conceal the fact that, in the 
present temper of theSouthern people, it cannot he and 'will 
not be submitted to. The 'irrepressible-conflict' doctrine, 
announced and advocated by the ablest and most distinguished 
leader of the Republican party, is an open declaration of war 
against the institution of African slavery, wherever it exists; 
and I would be disloyal to Vin^'inia and the South if I did not 
declare that the election of such a man, entertaining such 
sentiments and advocating such doctrines, aughtto he resisted 
hu the slaveholding States. The idea of permitting such a 
man to have the control and direction of the army and navy 
of the United States, and the appointment of high judicial 
and executive officers, postmasters included, cannothe enter- 
tained by the South for a moment.'" 

I might quote, Mr. President, the avowals of disunion senti- 
ments by other Democratic leaders and other Democratic 
presses; for these avowals of disloyalty to the unity of tlie 
Republic are scattered, in rank luxuriance, broadcast over the 
land. But I must pause. 

Mr. Clay. Will the Senator pardon me a moment? He 
seems to charge the sentiments, which he calls disunion senti- 
ments, on the Democratic party mainly. So far as the State 
ot Alabama is involved in that charge, I may speak advisedly 
when I say that sentiments, such as I uttered and which he 
has quot^, have been indorsed unanimously by the Legisla- 
ture of the State which I have the honor to represent. And 
If the Senator will pardon me further, I will say, too, that 
those who call themselves Americans or Oppositionists there, 
I think, have gone even further than the Democratic party. 
Hence, I hardly think it is just to the American party in the 
South to attribute these sentiments exclusively to the Demo- 
cratic party. I think the other side are entitled to a share of 
the credit of them. 

Mr. WiLSOX. It may be so in the gentleman's own State; I 
know that on the Gulf they are running wild with disunion; 
but how is it with the representatives of the Southern Opposi- 
tion on the floor of the House of Representatives ? Their sen- 
timents have been pronounced, nearly all of them, distinctly 
in favor of the Union. 

I have, however, gathered up enough of these noisy menaces 
of disunion, which are falling thick and fast around us, to 
show to the Senate and the country that the accepted leaders 
of the Democratic party are secessionists and disunionists, 
with the accents of disunion perpetually on their lips, and its 
spirit burning in their hearts. I iiave also gathered up, from 
the mass of facts which lie at my feet, enough to show that the 
Democratic party is tainted with the odor of disunion, that 
the stain of disloyalty is now indelibly stamped upon its brow. 
I have shown, too, that these menaces of disunion, which De- 
mocratic leaders are hm-ling around us in this Capitol go un- 



rebuked by the northern Democracy, whose glory it is to fol- 
low these apostles of secession and disunion. The country 
will not fail to see, and to mark, too, the discreditable fact, 
that while Democratic leaders in these chambers are mutter- 
ing angry menaces of disunion, and while such madness goes 
unrebuked, even by the faintest whispers of the Democratic 
representatives of the loyal North and West, the Democratic 
presses in th.e North and West are busy— not in raining upon 
the heads of Democratic disimionists the withering rebukes of 
patriotism— but in the work of misrepresenting and maligning 
those who cling to the Union with unswerving fidelity alike in 
victory and in defeat. The country, too, will not fail to see 
that the Democratic orators dare not, even at a safe distance, 
utter the softest censure against the disloyalty of leaders they 
follow as the bondman follows his master, but they are appeal- 
ing to the selfisli fears of men to disown their manhood, and, 
by acts of humiliation, appease the awakened wrath of the 
Democratic chieftains now menacmg the integrity of the 
Union. 

Mr. President, the American Democracy, led by slave per- 
petuists and propagandists, secessionists and disunionists, now 
in the light of this age, stands before the nation the enemy of 
human progress, and in favor of the conservation and propa- 
gation of old abuses. No longer does the Democracy utter the 
accents of popular rights. No longer does the DemocrMcy 
sympathize with man, at home or abroad, struggling for the 
recovery of lost rights or the enlargement of existing privi- 
leges. Does the Legislature of Kansas pass an act for the abo- 
lition of slavery there ? Democracy resists it, and arrests it, 
by Executive action. Does the Legislature of Nebraska, left 
" perfectly free to form their own domestic institutions in their 
own way." pass a bill to wip« fron; that vast Territory the pol- 
lution of slavery? Democracy resists it, defeats it, by the 
Executive veto, and applauds that veto. Does the Legislature 
of New Mexico enact a bloody slave code ? Democracy 
prompts it, praises it, applauds it. Does a sovereign Common- 
wealth lighten by humane legislation the burdens of a pro- 
scribed race, so that it may rise into the sunlight of a broader 
and higher manhood ? Democracy is outraged, shocked, and 
it avenges itself by gibbering taunts, gibes and jeers. Does a 
slave State enact, or propose to enact, statutes to still more 
oppress those already bending under the iron heel of oppres- 
sion, or to check the action of its own citizens who may be 
prompted by sentiments of benevolence or a sense of justice to 
lessen the bitterness of bondage or give freedom to their own 
bondmen? Democracy approves and applauds it. Does Wal- 
ker, at the head of a lawless band of fillibusteis, decree slave- 
ry in Central America? Democracy hails and applauds that 
decree. Does any indication point to the possible abolition of 
slavery in Cuba? Democracy protests, cannot permit it, will 
pay $200,000,000 for that slaveholding isle, but will not accept 
the "Gem of the Antilles," if burdened with freedom. Does 
I*;ngland strike the fetters from the limbs of eight hundred 
thousand West India bondmen ? Democracy deplores it, dis- 
approves it, and persists in misrepresenting the effects of that 
great act of justice and humanity. 

Does the Emperor of Russia propose a plan for the emanci- 
pation of millions, not of the African race, but of white men ? 
Democracy shakes its head, shrugs its shoulders, utters no note 
of joy, sends no word of encouragement or greeting to the en- 
lightened monarch who would enlarge the rights and elevate 
the condition of men. Does the Republican party, imbued 
with the sentiments of the Republican fathers, propose to ar- 
rest the expansion of slavery over the territories of the Repub- 
lic, and save those territories to free labor, check the re-open- 
ing slave traffic, and put the National Government in harmo- 
ny with a progressive Christian civilization? Democracy, 
smitten with the consciousness of its waning power, raises the 
startling cry of disunion. To its abandonment of the senti- 
ments, opinions and policy of the Republican fathers; to its 
betrayal of the rights and interests of free labor and the cause 
of liuman rights at home and abroad, is now added disloyalty 
to the integrity of the Union. Let the intelligent patriotism 
of the nation rebuke this mad exhibition of folly and fanati- 
cism, which would shiver this Union into broken fragments, 
and let it proclaim, in the words of Andrew Jackson, "The 
Federal Union must be preserved." 



Aggeessiok^s of the Slave Powek. 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. HENET WILSON, 

OF MASSACHUSETTS, 

m EEPLY TO HOK JEFFERSON DAVIS, 

Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 26, 1860. 



Ml-. Wilson. Mr. President, during the past seven weeks, 
these halls have rung with angry menaces of disunion. Dis- 
union has been predicted, disunion has been threatened, in 
the event of the triumph of the Republican party in Novem- 
ber next. We have sat here coolly, calmly, and listened to 
those angry and noisy menaces. Yesterd;iy I gathered up 
some of these predictions, some of these arguments, some of 
these threats of disunion, and presented them to the consider- 
ation of the Senate. 'I'he Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis,] 
with. I thouglit, something of sensiljility, sometljing of feeling, 
replied to those remarks. I know, sir, that there comes to us, 
from the loyal and ,_-atriotic freemen of the North, the voice 
of condemnation of the angry menaces which have been made 
in. these Chambers. There come to Senators on the other side 
of this Chamber the imploring apjjeals of men who are shiver- 
ing over the political graves then- leaders in these halls are 
digging for them. Sir, I was glad to see. yesterday, when the 
declarations of Democratic presses and leaders were present- 
ed to their view, a degree of feeling manifested on the other 
side of the Chamber. Senators are beginning to feel that it is 
no easy task to look these Democratic measures of disloyalty 
to the Union in the face. I take the movement yesterday to 
be a premonitory symptom of retreat from positions which 
even the Senator from Mississippi cannot maintain. I say to 
the Senate and the country, that we shall now witness the re- 
treat of the Democratic leaders from their disloyal and revo- 
tionary positions. 

The Senator from Mississippi called upon me to say why I 
had arraigned gentlemen here for these avowals. He charged 
it upon the Republican party, that, in 1856, it went off under a 
sectional banner, on a sectional platform, and under the lead 
of a sectional candidate ; and, in so doing, it seceded from the 
Union ; it adopted practical secession. Now, I have to say to 
that Senator, that the call for the Republican National Con- 
vention, in 1856. was addressed to all men. North and South, 
who concurred in the sentiments of the Republican fathers, 
who were opi)osed to the extension of slavery, and in favor of 
its prohil)ition in the Territories of the United States ; and that 
call would have summoned Washington and Jefferson, and 
the men who founded the Government of the country, into the 
Convention. Men from the South came to that Convention, 
and when they returned to their homes they were denounced 
for their attendance, and one of them banished from his State. 
That Republican call invited the people who could stand on 
the doctrine of slavery restriction that came from the pen of 
Tliomas .Jefferson in 178-t— a doctrine sanctioned and sustained 
by the great men of this country for two generations; a doc- 
trine indorsed as constitutional by the Supreme Court of the 
United States in 1810, 1819, 1828, and in 1840; indorsed as con- 
Btitutional by the Supreme Court of the State the Senator from 
Mississippi represents in 1818—1 say, sir, that the l{epublican 
call summoned all of this class of men in America into its Na- 
tional Convention. The Republican party laid down princi- 
ples as broad as the Union itself. It embraced the whole 
country, and the interests of the whole country, in its policy. 
It adopted no sectional creed, no sectional platform, no sec- 
tional policy, but stood upon the ancient faith of our fathers, 
and there it stands to day, upon an impregnable basis, where 
stood the men who framed the Constitution of the United 
States and early aidministered it. 

So much, sir. for my right to speak as a Republican, and to 
rebuke the disunion avowals of men who have adopted a new 



creed, a new reading of the Constitution, and who threaten to 
pull down the columns of the Union, unless this nation 
accepts their new creeds and their new constructiqps of con- 
stitutional power. That is it. Let the country understand it. 
The Republican party stands upon the doctrine of Washington, 
Jefferson, and the men who framed the Constitution. It 
stands upon doctrines sanctioned by the highest judicial 
tribunal of the country in other and better days. The Repub- 
lican party proposes nothing new, but stands by the old tradi- 
tional policy. A new school, accepting the creed that came 
from tlie brain of Calhoun in 1847, now exists, and we who 
choose to follow the fathers rather than these new lights are 
threatened now with the overthrow of the Government if we 
do not accept their new constitutional constructions. That is 
the whole of it, and let the country understand it. 

The Senator objected to my right to speak, because, in 1851, 
I attended asocial festival in Boston, and made a speech at 
that festival. Let me say that I stand by that speech here to- 
day. I do not disavow a word of it. That speech is not full 
nor complete, and it does not report all I did say ; but what is 
reported I stand by. In that speech I did say, then and there, 
to the faces of gentlemen, what I have said all my life. I disa- 
gree with those gentlemen on several points, and they know, 
and everybody in my State knows, that I disagree with those 
gentlemen in regard to their views of the Constitution, of State 
rights, and of the Union. I never uttered a word or dreamed 
a dream of hostility to the Union of these States, and I never 
even allowed myself to put a case of disunion even as a sup- 
position, as a contingency. But, sir, attending that festival, on 
an invitation, I spoke of the fidelity of Mr. Garrison, and of 
those that associated with him— men who do not vote, men 
who hold no offices, men who will accept no offices, men that 
you may call fanatical, if you please, but men who in personal 
character, and in all the relations of private life, have the re- 
spect of all who know them. Disagreeing from these gentle- 
men in regard to their construction of the Constitution, I paid 
tliem the tribute of my respect for their zeal, their devotion 
to what they regarded to be their duty. For an oppressed and 
hated race these men have devoted years of self-sacrificing 
toil— I do not agree with them in many of their views— I differ 
widely from them. I do not think they have always labored 
wisely, but of their sincere devotion no one can doubt: and I 
then paid them my humble tribute of respect, and I shall not 
recall those words, here or elsewhere. Sir, I disagree with the 
Senator from Mississippi as I do with Garrison in his views of 
the Constitution and of the Union, but I have often, in public 
and in private, in my section of tlie country, borne the sin- 
cere tribute of my admiration of his ability, intelligence, and 
fidelity to his convictions. 

The Senator arraigns me for having, in that speech, paid a 
comi<liment to the reformers of England, while he says I 
arraigned England for forcing slavery upon this continent. 
Why. sir, does not the Senator know that, for nearly two cen- 
turies, the party in favor of slavery and the slave trade con- 
trolled the Government of England, and shaped her policy, 
and that, too, against the protests, in later years, of the noblest 
and liest intellects of England ? It is not the class of men who 
planted slavery in America to whom I paid the tribute of my 
admiration. Nor is it the class of men who are upholding the 
course of England in India, that I regard to-day as one of the 
greatest crimes of this nineteenth century: for when I think 
of the wrongs England has perpetrated in India, I can hai-dly 



11 



bear that an Englishman should reproach me or reproach my 
country with holding any number ot men in bondage. But I 
paid my tribute of respect to that class of men who, during 
this centiu-y, have abolished the slave trade ; have given free- 
dom to eight hundred thousand bondmen in the West Indies ; 
who have carried reforms in England that have enlarged the 
privileges of the people; and who, to-day, are engaged inpress- 
mg upon the Government reforms that will enlarge their 
rights and privileges. A more devoted class of advocates of 
human rights the smi, in his com-se across the heavens, never 
looked down upon, than have acted in England dui'ing the 
present century. They have carried their reforms against hail- 
storms of abuse ; just such abuse as is now heaped upon us on 



tills side of the water, by men who ai-e but repeating the words 
conservatism, 



of English presses ; 



;lish statesmen— of blind and fanati- 



The Senator refers to my remarks of yesterday as to the 
slave power ; and the Senator, in this connection, does not 
seem to understand what I mean by the slave power. I will 
tell the Senator, and I will try to make him understand what I 
mean by it. When I speak of the slave power of this Govern- 
ment, I mean the political influence of slavery in the Govern- 
ment of the country. When the Constitution was made, there 
were about six hundred thousand.slaves in this country. They 
were not, on an average, worth one hundred dollars apiece. 
Slavery, as an element of political power, was utterly con- 
temptible. There were in the Constitutional Convention and 
in the early Government men from South Carolina and Geor- 
gia representing slave interests ; but the gi'eat mass of the men 
representing the Southern States, especially Virginia, were men 
opposed to the extension of slavery, opposed to the slave 
trade, and openly in favor of the policy of emancipation. 
These six hundred thousand now have increased to four mil- 
lion. Their value, when the Government commenced, was 
estimated at forty or fifty million dollars, and it has increased 
to more than two thousand million. Here is a vast material 
interest. This interest is upheld by State law ; and the result 
is. that men in favor of perpetuating and extending this sys- 
tem of slavery over this continent have obtained the control 
of the sovereign States of this Union. Why, sir, would Virgi- 
nia send Washington to these Halls if he was living? Would 
Virginia send Jefferson here on the avowals he made, avowals 
such as have never been equaled Ijy any statesman on this 
continent, against slavery? Would Virginia send Madison, 
and Patrick Henry, and George Mason, or men who made tlie 
declarations they made, into these Chambers now? AVould 
IMaryland send Luther Martin? Would she send William 
Pinkney here now to represent her sentiments? Would 
North Carolina send Judge Gaston and Judge Iredell— men 
who have left upon the record of the country their sentiments 
in favor of the emancipation of the bondman ? No, sir, I tell 
you this slave power has banished from the councils of the 
nation not only all of that class of men, but nearly all of the 
old Henry Clay AVhigs and the followers of Andrew Jackson, 
the old national men ; and Congress now is made up of the 
disciples of Mr. Calhoun, of the men who have dethroned 
Jefferson as the apostle of Democracy, and enthroned Calhoun 
as their philosopher, guide, and friend. 

Mr. Mason. Will the Senator allow me to make an inquii-y, 
that I may learn exactly his position? Do I understand the 
Senator to mean by the slave power, as he expresses it, the 
representation of the slaves provided for by the Constitution ? 

Mr. Wilson. I will answer the Senator frankly ; no, sir, I do 
not. I will tell the Senator what I do mean. I will try to 
make myself understood on this point. I mean the influence 
that results from the holding of four million men as property, 
valued at two or three thousand million dollars. 'J'he holding 
of it by law, and the desire to extend it and perpetuate it, 
have developed an element of political power; it is bold, ar- 
rogant, aggressive ; it governs the States ; it governs the Fede- 
ral Government to-day. 

The Senator from Mississippi wanted me to stat". and he 
said he had called for it before, what wc considei-.d the ag- 
gressions of this slave power. Well, sir, I will endeavor to 
give the Senator from Mississippi some information upon this 
point of aggression. He seems to see none. I will state a few 
of those points; and if the Senator does not see slavery ag- 
gression in those points, then I think he must have come to 
the conclusion that slavery is imperial, and has the right and 
the power to do what it pleases in the (lOvernment of this 
country. I choose to go back only some twenty-five years. 
"When we framed the Constitution, the people of the Free 
iStates were not responsible for the existence of slavery in 
their National Capital. You fixed this Capital here, on the 
banks of the Potomac; you accepted the slave laws of Mary- 
land and Virginia : accepted the slave code that existed here ; 
and here, in the National Capital, in the eyes of representa- 
tives of free men, in the face of representatives of Foreign 
Governments; here, in the Capital of this Democratic Repub- 
lic, slavery and the slave-trade existed and flourished : and 
we. the people of the United States, were all responsible for 
the existence of slavery and the slave-trade in this District. 
The Federal Government has complete constitutional power 
in this District to govern it. The people of a portion of the 
country sent their petitions here, asking Congress to abolish 
the slave-trade and slavery. This constitutional right of peti- 
tion, this riglit that is above the Constitution, as Caleb Gushing 
said on the floor of the House of Keiiresentatives— a right won 
by our ancestors on the battle-fields of the Old World, which 
t ley brought with thtm here — I say tliis right of petition, f . r 
seven years, in these Halls, was cloven down; yes. sir, that 
right was cloven down here on the floor of the Senate and 
of the House of Representatives. Does not the Senator from 
Jiississippi call that an aggression upon the rights of freemen, 
to deny their petitions a hearing in the Halls of the Congress 
of the United States? This right was won after a battle of 
sevi n years against that aggressive policy of the slave power. 

Then, sir, ex-President xVdams presented a petition purport- 
ing to come from a few slaves; and a vote of censure was 
moved upon him, and the Hall of the House of Representa- 
tives rang with bitter and fiery denunciations of that venera- 
ble statesman for presenting that petition of a few poor slaves 



to this ^eat nation. During those same days, when the right 
of petition was cloven down on this floor and in the other 
Hall, the mails of the United States were examined by Post- 
masters in the Southern States. Those mails were rifled, tind 
in Charleston, South Carolina, they were burned, and the 
Postmaster-General of the United States wrote a letter in 
which he said he could not approve, but he would not con- 
demn. Was not that an aggression, an outrage? Yes, sir; 
was it not an aggression and an outrage? Will the Senator 
answer ? 

For years, the neutrality laws of the United States, under the 
expanding influences of the slave power, were openly violated, 
and then came that question of the annexation of Texas to 
this Union. While that great question was pending, that was 
to give to this country three hundred thousand squai'e miles 
of slave soil, Mr. Calhoun, the leader of the slave interests 
during his life, insulted the moral and religious sentiments 
of the people of this country by sending to France, in the face 
of Europe, a public document avowing that the annexation 
of Texas was for the purpose of strengthening slavery in the 
United States. Was not this aggression ? Was it not an out- 
rage upon the sentiments of men who believe slavery to be 
an evil, to be a wrong, that the Secretary of State should send 
a public document to Europe to notify the Christian and civil- 
ized world that the Repulilic of the United States proposed to 
annex a foreign nation in order to uphold and perpetuate 
slavery ? 

Then, sir, came the Mexican war, the result of that an- 
nexation, the predicted result of it; and whatever may have 
been the cost of life or of treasure of that great contest, the 
aggressive policy of slavery is responsible for it. When the 
territories which we acquired from Mexico came to us, the 
people of the free States wished to preserve them to free labor 
and free laboring men. The Democracy of the free States, iu 
their Conventions, in their Legislatures, and all their Repre- 
sentatives in these Chambers, with two exceptions, voted for 
the application of the proviso prohibiting slavery to the Mexi- 
can acquisitions; but the slave power, that the Senator from 
Mississippi cannot comprehend, cannot see, proclaimed that, 
if the Democracy of the North did not abandon that position, 
the Democratic party of this country was to be rent asunder 
ami destroyed ; and under the iron rule of this slave power, 
the Democratic leaders throughout the free States changed 
their principles, abandoned the doctrine of continuing free the 
Territories of the United States that came to us free. 1'hen, 
sir, California came here, asking for admission into the Union 
as a sovereign State. She came here robed in the garments 
of freedom; but the influence of slavery, the slave power, 
of which we are speaking, in this Chamber, held California 
here for months, knocking at the_ doors of the Union for ad- 
mission. In the hour of their triumph, they gave to Texas 
fifty or sixty thousand square miles of territory, large enough 
to make a State like Vn-ginia, and paid her $10,000,000 to take 
it; when, according to the words of Mr. Benton, it was but a 
mere claim, not an established right. General Houston raised 
the claim to this vast territory; but it was not acknowledged 
by Mexico, or established by occupation. 

Texas had not established that claim, and we gave her fifty 
or sixty thousand square miles; and we gave her $10,000,000. 
That was the settlement. Then came the Fugitive Slave Law. 
I am not here to deny constitutional provisions; but I take it, 
if there be a provision in the Constitution of the United States 
for the rendition of fugitives, the other provisions of that Con- 
stitution, in any law that may be made, are to be carried out. 
There are those who believe that Fugitive Slave Law to be 
unconstitutional. There are those who believe the time will 
come when that Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, in its various pro- 
visions, will be pronounced unconstitutional by the general 
judgment of the nation. 

Then, sir, came the repeal of the Missouri compromise; and 
the Senator from Mississippi has made a complaint against us 
as the violators of that compromise, and not the men who 
repealed it. What is the argument ? A bargain is made ; one 
part has all the benefits of that bargain ; when the hour comes 
for the other to have its benefits, it is taken from them. And 
what is the argument of the Senator from Mississippi? It 
amounts to just this: we made a bargain; he and I make a 
bargain in regard to a special measure; he wishes to apply it 
to another matter; I refuse to do it; and then the Senator 
says, as you refuse to do that, I will break the old bargain. 
That is the whole of it— no more, no less. 

Then, sir. following the repeal of the Missouri compromise, 
came the invasion of five thousand Missourians into Kansas. 
Was not that an aggression? They took the ballot-boxes; 
they elected a Legislature; they passed a slave code; they 
established slavery. They passed laws making it a peniten- 
tiary offence for a freeman to say that slavery did not exist 
there. Any Northern man who should say, in that Territory, 
that slavery did not exist there, was liable to two years in the 
penitentiary. Was not that an aggression ? The same acts 
provided that any man who was opposed to holding slaves in 
the 'I'erritory of Kansas could not sit upon a jury in a case of 
that kind. What was done with the men who led in these 
lawless acts of violence and fraud in the Territory of Kansas ? 
Clark, who murdered Parber, was in ofiice, and has since been 
appointe<l to another office, and confirmed by the Senate. Em- 
ory, who led the band thai murdered Phillips, is now in office 
in the Territory. Henderson, who had the control of the Del- 
aware frauds, of which so much has been said, has held office 
in that Territory. Many men engaged in those acts have been 
upheld in office by the Government. 

Then, sir, came the Lecompton Constitution. Was not that 
an aggression ? It came to this Chamber, and, although it was 
known by every intelligent man in the country that it was not 
the will of the people of Kansas, it was pressed in these Halls 
for months. The attempt was made to force that Constitution 
upon an unwilling people, a protesting people, a people who 
were imploring you to reject it. 

Then, sir, came the English bill, another of those measures 
of aggression, not only an aggression, but an insult, for it said 
to Kansas, " You may come into the Union as a slave State, 
with yom- present population ; but if you decline to come into 



12 



the Union with your present population as a slave State, you 
shall not come into the Union until you have ninety-three 
thousand inhabitants." This was the distmction, a distinction 
made in that bill, that a State, with its present population, 
could come into the Union as a slave State, but if it would not 
come in as a slave State, it should stay out of tlie Union until 
it had nhiety-three thousand inhabitants. The people of Kan- 
sas rejected and spurned your proposition, by ten thousand 
majority. That is not all. They have held a Convention; 
they have framed a Constitution ; they now ask admission into 
the Union as a free State; it has gone through all the forms 
of law; and yet that slave power this day and this hour is 
managing, manoeuvring to keep Kansas out of the Union this 
session, under a Constitution of her own making, and I expect 
to see that aggression triumph. 

Now we have the new constitutional construction of the 
right of the master to carry his slaves into the Territoi-ies, and 
hold them there as property, under the protection of the Con- 
stitution of the United States. This is a new rearling, a new 
doctrine, a doctrine we reject, and it is an aggressive policy. 
It is intended as a policy of aggression. It is not intended so 
much for the present as for the future. "Why, sir, I find a let- 
ter wi'itten by the Senator from Alabama, [Mr. Clay,] in which 
he refers to these matters, and speaks of the practical impor- 
tance to the South of maintaining and upholding this doctrine 
of the right of the master to carry his slaves into a Territory, 
under the protection of the Federal Constitution, and we have 
before us tliis very resolution of the Senator from Mississippi, 
[Mr. Brown,] asking the Senate of the United States to pro- 
nounce upon this doctrine, and not only to accept the doctrine, 
but to accept its consequences, and pass a slave code for the 
government of slavery in all the Territories of the United 
States. 

Sir, a few years ago we had the Ostend manifesto. That was 
dictated by this influence of slavery. It was a declarati(pn 
that disgraced the diplomacy of the country in the face of the 
civilized world, and there is no American that can look the 
world in the face, and read that manifesto, who will not hang 
his head. 

We have sought the acquisition of Cuba to strengthen slave- 
ry. During the last ten years we have had a balance of trade 
against us in Cuba of one hundred and forty or one hundred 
and fifty million dollais. We had the offer, five years ago. of 
a commercial treaty with Spain in regard to the island of Cuba. 
A proposition was made to iMr. Perry, stating the readiness 
of the Spanish Government to make commercial treaties with 
us; and liad this Government looked at the interest of the 
country, instead of seeking the acquisition of that island, 
which we are told they would not take if it was free, they 
would have made a commercial treaty by which the material 
interests of this country would have been cared for. So it is 
with Mexico ; so it is with Central America. The policy of the 
acquisition of territory for the purpose of planting slavery in 
it has alienated the affections of the people of this continent 
south of us towards us. These peoiile now hate us and fear 
us, and our commercial interests witli the nations south of us 
on this continent are, and have been, sacrificed, liecause it is 
the policy of the slave power to acquire territory in which to 
plant slavery. I charge that this aggressive polic.v. this ex- 
pansive policy of the slave power, is sacrificing the material, 
the manufacturing, the commercial interests of this country. 

There is another subject to wliich I wisli to refer. They have 
a law in South Carolina, or rather a series of laws in that State, 
by which, when a vessel comes into the harbors of that State, 
if a colored inhabitant of a Northern State is on board that 
vessel, he shall he imprisoned, the writ of habeas corpus de- 
nied him, and he compelled to pay his own jail fees. In 1843, 
Massachusetts sent to South Carolina one of the foremost ad- 
vocates and men of our State, lie went to that State to have 
this law tested in the judicial tribunals of the country; and 
this law was pronounced by William Wirt to be unconstitu- 
tional. This law was pronounced by Judge Johnson, of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, a son of South Carolina, 
to be an unconstitutional law. Massachusetts sent one of the 
first lawyers of the country to test this question in the courts 
of the country, and he was forcibly expelled fi'oni that State ; 
and to add to that indignity, a law was passed, imposing the 
highest penalties if any person came into tliat State for the 
purpose of ol)structing this law by any legal process. Does 
not the Senator from Mississippi regard that as an aggression ? 
Is it not an outrage ? 

Mr. Hammond. I do not feel disposed to interrupt the Sena- 
toi-, or to say anything on that subject; but, on a proper occa- 
sion, it will be very easy to show that that is perfectly warrant- 
ed. We passed a police law in South Carolina for our own 
personal protection. Certain classes of people came there and 
interfered with our domestic affairs. Was it an aggression to 
repel them or put them under surveillance, or do what we 
pleased with them, while they were there ? We did not bring 
them there. They came voluntarily. 

Mr. Wilson, I shall be very glad, Mr. President, to have 
the Senator from South Carolina, on a fit occasion, endeavor 
to vindicate the policy of that law. Let me say, however, to 
that Senator now in passing, that when South (Carolina passes 
laws to protect herself, she has no right to infringe upon the 
constitutional rights of others. If any persons go into that 
State and violate her laws, she will punish them. Of that I do 
not complain ; but, sir. what right has South Cai'olina to pass 
an act that colored citizens of Massachusetts, when they go 
into the harbor of Charleston, who are innocent of crime, 
shall, merely because they happen to be colored men, be taken 
and imprisoned before hey commit any offence? 

Mr. Hammond. All this grows out of the peculiar differences 
in the domestic institutions of the North and th ■ South. Dif- 
ferent laws must be made, to suit different countries and dif- 
ferent systems. Colored people are not citizens in South Caro- 
lix a. We cannot recognize them either as citizens of South 
Carolina or citizens of AJassachusetts; and the Supreme Co rt 
has since decided that they are not citizens of the United 
States. They are therefore not entitled to the constitutional 
provision that places the citizens of the different States on an 
equality within each other's limits. We had reason to believe 



that it was dangerous to the peace of our community and to 
our peculiar institutions, to permit them to come there. Let 
me say again, that all this grows out of what the Senatoi's on 
the other side do not seem at all to comprehend; thai we livd 
under distinctly different social systems, and must have ptcu- 
liar laws. W iihout intending to aggi-ess upon anybody else, 
or to infiinge on the rights of any individual, much less of iiny 
State or of any section, we must be allowed to take care of 
ourselves. That law to which the Senator alludes has been 
materially modified. It has been ascertained that it was un- 
necessarily severe, and instead of incarcerating- the colored 
persons in jail, they are now kept under sm-veillance, perhiips 
allowed to stay on their vessels ; 1 do not recollect the exact 
modification, but they are no longer subject to the same im- 
positions they were before. This South Carolina has done 
voluiitarilv ; and thus South Carolina and all the South would 
ameliorate the condition of the slaves, if they were let alone. 
It has been done. They are ameliorating it; and we could go 
on to a greater degi'ee, if we were let alone. 

ftlr. ^^'iLsoN. The Senator says they live under different 
social systems, and they must have their way of protecting 
themselves. Well, sir, I am willing that they shall protect 
themselves ; but in protecting themselves, I say they have no 
right to infringe on the rights of others. What are we to think 
of a social system that requires this sacrifice of the rights of 
others? 

Mr. Chesnut. Let me say to the Senator from Massachus- 
etts, that the ground we assume in South Carolina on that 
point, the ground' which has been sustained by the courts, is 
that every State has a constitutional i-ight to pass such police 
laws as will protect itself against any trouble. You pass your 
police laws in New Vork and in every seaport town in the 
country; you quarantine vessels, you raise all sorts of bar- 
riers of protection against evils which you anticipate. Now, 
in South Carolina we have the same right, and it has been so 
decided by the courts, under the nile of police regulations, to 
protect ourselves against interference with our rights and in- 
terests by the Senator from Massachusetts and his people. I 
put it upon the Inroad principle that he has no right to claim 
for a negro from Massachusetts, or for a negro from elsewheie, 
that he shall become his emissary under the pretended rights 
guarantied liy the Constitution to the citizens of this country— 
that lie shall insinuate him upon us under any such pretence. 
We claim that as a right of sovereignty belonging to all free 
people, the right of self-protection by police regulations and 
otherwise. 

Mr. Wilson. I want to call the attention of the Senators 
from South Carolina to the precise and exact issue. In Mas- 
sachusetts, and in several of our States, the colored men are 
regarded, and ever have been regarded, as citizens. They 
have all the rights of citizens. They fought the battles of the 
Revolution. They help to make the laws ; tliey obey tlie laws. 
In 1??2U, South Carolina passed tliis act. V\ illiam Wirt, then 
Attorney-General of the United States, pronoimced it uncon- 
stitutional. At that time. Judge Johnson, of South Cart>lina, 
was on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
and he pronounced it unconstitutional. Under these circum- 
stances, men were imprisoned, were punished, and some of 
them, sold into slavery. Massachusetts sent a lawyer to South 
Carolina ; to do what? To take that case before the judicial 
trihLirals to be pronounced upon. 

Mr. Hamjiond. If the Senator will allow me to say one word 
more, I shall have done. 

Mr. Wilson. Certainly. 

Mr. Hammond. It so liappens that I was Governor of the 
State vt'hen Mr. Hoar came. I had known him before in Con- 
gress, and he had often avowed to me that he was not an abo- 
litionist. He was a pleasant, kind old gentleman, well inform- 
ed, and I had a sort of friendship for him during the short time 
that I sat near him in Congress. He came, and sent me his 
commission under the broad seal of the State of Massachusetts. 
Knowing tliat perhaps there might be some violence done, I 
took care that no violence should be done towards him ; atid 
although he was, as you may say, ejected from the State, he wtis 
only told the situation and circumstances of affairs, and po- 
litely asked, and escorted by some of the first gentleiiien of 
Charleston to the boat. \\ hy did Massachusetts send us a 
commissioner but for an incendiary purpose? If she wished 
to try the constitutionality of that law, she could have got 
lawyers enough in Charleston. 

Mr. Wilson. She tried. 

Mr. Ham.mond. Well, then, if she could not get a lawyer 
there, she ought to have known that the state of public feel- 
ing was such that sending a conmiissioner there was an act of 
aggression ; and what right had she to send a commissioner 
there to produce an abolition excitement in the city of 
Charleston ? 

Mr. Wilson. Mr. President, I am very glad of the t'kipose 
we have here to-day from South Carolina in regard to this 
law 

Mr. Hammond. lam not at all aware of the fact that she 
could not get a lawer there. I doubt vei-y much whether it is 
so. She could not have tried all the lawyers. There are law- 
yers enough now who would do it, and I believe always were. 

Mr. Wilson. Mr. President, South Carolina has a law, 
passed when that Senator was Governor, making it an offence 
against the law to act as counsel in such a case. 1 have the 
law before me. 

Mr. Hammond. That was after this. 

Mr. Wilson. It was. 

]Mr. Hammond. And in consequence of it. 

Mr. Wilson. Now, Mr. President, let us understand each 
other. The Senator from South Carolina [ftlr. Chesnut] says 
that this excitement in 1844 was owing to the aggressions of 
Massachusetts on South Carolina. What aggressions ? 

Mr. Chesnut. Shall I answer. 

Mr. Wilson. Certainly. 

Mr. Chesnut. Wh.v, sir, the aggressions were of the most 
palpable and continual character, by the people of Massachu- 
setts, by the citizens of Massachusetts, by the abolitionists 
of Massachusetts. I suppose the new Republican party, 
under its rebaptismal name, had not appeared ; but Garri- 



IS 



son, that teacher at whose font the gentleman was bap- 
tized in his ideas of liberty— a man whose opinion of the 
Constitution of the country is, that it is a league with death 
and a covenant with hell— that very teacher from whom the 
gentleman, as appeared from what was read here yesterday, 
had taken his lessons of patriotism, of devotion to the country 
and to liberty : that very man, and all his class, had been ex- 
citing the people, sending abolition emissaries, distributing 
abolition documents to us. That was the aggression of the 
citizens of Massachusetts, which the people of South Carolina 
had a right to protect themselves against. 

Mr. Wilson. Mr. President, the Senator rose for the pur- 
pose of telling me what aggressions had been perpetrated up- 
on his own State, and he states no aggression ; he has none to 
state. The people of 'Massachusetts never made an aggression 
on the people of South Carolina to this hour, and that Senator 
cannot put his finger on a solitary one. I defy him to do it. 
I say here, to-day, to that Senator, that he has not, and the 
men whom he associates with never have, produced the shad- 
ow of evidence that any such attempt was ever made by the 
citizens of Massachusetts to incite slaves to insurrection in 
South Carolina, at any time, or on any occasion. Before he 
makes that declaration again, I ask him to give us one fact, 
one well-authenticated fact. 

But the other Senator from South Carolina [Mr. Hammond] 
complains that we sent this agent, because we might have em- 
ployed lawyers in Charleston. I say to that Senator, that Mas- 
sachusetts did endeavor to engage lawyers in Charleston to 
take this case, but she could not obtain a lawyer in Charleston 
to test the case; and we sent Mr. Hoar to South Carolina to 
try the case, and South Carolina would not allow him to take 
that case into court. Siie passed a law that one of her most 
distinguished men on the bench of the Supreme Court pro- 
nounced unconstitutional. Massachusetts wished to test it, 
and sent a Lawyer there when she could not obtain one in the 
State. The one she sent was driven from the State, and then 
a law was passed making it a penitentiary offence to come 
there and try that matter again, and making it an offence for 
a South Carolina lawyer to take a case of the kind. 
, On the 18th December, 1844, the Legislature of South Caro- 
hna passed a law to prevent any person thereafter coming in- 
to the State for the purpose, or any attorney or other per- 
son in the State, from instituting any proceeding that should 
test the constitutionality of her law of 1820, which imprisoned 
and sold into perpetual slavery the free colored persons of the 
North coming into the State in mercliant vessels or otherwise; 
visiting any such person with the most fearful penalties. 

The first section of the law enacted, among other things, 
that if any person, on his own behalf, or in virtue of any au- 
thority from any State, should come within the limits of South 
Carolina with intent to counteract or hinder the operation of 
sucli laws as have been made in relation to slaves or free per- 
sons OF COLOR, he shall, on conviction, be sentenced to banish- 
ment, AND TO SOCH FINE AND IMPRISONMENT AS MAY BE DEEMED 
FITTING BY THE COURT WHICH SHALL HAVE TRIED THE OFFENCE ; 

that is, FOR LIFE, if the court please. 

The second section enacts, among other things, that if any 
person within the State shall accept any commission or autho- 
rity from any other State, and shall do anything to counteract 
or hinder the operation of such laws, he shall, on conviction, 
be sentenced to pay for the first offence a fine not exceeding 
$1,000, and be imprisoned not exceeding one year; and for 
the second offence, he shall be imprisoned for seven years, and 
pay a like fine, or be banished from the State, in the discretion 
of the court. 

The third section enacts that the Governor shall require any 
person coming into South Carolina on his own behalf, or for 
any State, for any purpose "having relation to the laws or 
regulations of this State on the subject of slaves or free per- 
sons of color," to depart from the limits of the State in fortv- 
eight hours, on pain of banishment from the State, and fine 
and imprisonment at the discretion of the court. 

The fourth section enacts, among other thinss, that a second 
offence against the third section shall be punished by an im- 
prisonment not less than seven years, and by fine not less than 
$1,000, and banishment. 

On the same day, the same State enacted a law taking away 
all benefits, privileges, or rights, under the writ of hahean 
corpm. from "every negro or free person of color who shall 
enter this State on board any vessel, as a cook, steward, or 
mariner, or in any other employment on board such vessel." 

Sir, they have a law in the State of Virginia authorizing the 
officers of that State to go on board vessels, and charge the 
commander five doUars for making the examination. They 
have an institution in Virginia that her Senator [Mr. Mason] 
tells us ennobles the white man and the black man ;'" but 
they have got a class in the community, the negroes, wlio, 
somehow or other, do not like that kind of nobility, and they 
try to run away from this ennobling system ; and so they trv 
to hide themselves, it is said, on board vessels, and suffer ail 
the inconveniences of a long passage, in order to escape from 
this system that ennobles them, and then the officers charge 
five dollars for making the examination; and if a vessel sails 
out of Baltimore, and passing by the coast of Virginia is pre- 
vented by head winds from continuing her journey, a vessel 
that goes into the harbors of Virginia only to anchor, is visited 
and charged five dollars. 

Mr. Mason. Will the Senator allow me one moment? 

Mr. Wilson. Certainly. - 

Mi-.Mason. I have not looked back at my language on the 
occasion referred to ; but I think I am in the habit of using 
language that is appropriate. I did not, I am certain, use the 
term ' ennoble " in that connection, only because it would 
have been unmeaning. I presume I said— what I meant to 
say, and here repeat— that the experience of the Southern 
States has shown that the condition of African bondage ele 
vates both races. Now, sir, as to this law, I cannot give the 
honorable Senator any specific instances, because I have not 
treasured them up; but the honorable Senator knows enough 
of the cotemporaneous history of the country to know that 
coasting vessels along the Chesapeake Bay have more than 
once stolen, secreted, and canifed away the slaves of the pro- 



prietors upon its shores. It was to prevent that, that the State 
of Virginia, with full power and a perfect right, passed that 
police law appointing a set of officers, whose duty it is to ex- 
amine every coasting vessel, and see that she has not kidnap- 
ped any of our slaves; and the fee— I do not know what it is, 
five dollars probably, or whatever it is— I take it for granted is 
paid by those whose misfortune subjects them to that surveil- 
lance. It is a police law of the State ; and whether the State 
has a right to pass it or not, is a matter which the State will 
determine for itself and by itself. 

Mr. Wilson. A word about the Senator's language. I hap^ 
pened to hear it, and I find it here before me. He said : 

"The South had been led to examine the subject because 
of the abolition agitation: and it is now almost universally 
believed that the best condition of the African race is the one 
they are now subjected to in the South, and that it is ennobling 
to both races, white and black." 

Mr. Mason. Will the Senator tell me where he got that re- 
port? 

Mr. Wilson. I cannot ; but it is correct, for I heard it. 

Mr. Mason. I will not appeal to any Senator; but I will ask 
whether it is possible, knowing something of the use of terms, 
that I could have applied that term to the black race— that it 
ennobled them ? 

Mr. Clark. I desire to say, for one, that I distinctly heard 
it, and other Senators around me did. 

Mr. Mason. Then I will not say that I did not use it ; but I 
think, if I did, I must have been very unfortunate in the use 
of terms. The meaning was '' elevate." 

Mr. Clark. I will say to the Senator that we at the time 
thought it very singular that the term should be used, and it 
caused some remark among us. 

Mr. Mason. It was a mistake of terms. I do not remember 
the occasion ; but the proper term is " elevate." 

Mr. Wilson. Why should a law of that kind be imposed on 
those who have committed no offence ? ^Vhy should Virginia 
not pay her own police officers? Why should tliey board ves- 
sels sailing fi-oui 13altimore, who are sent in by stress of weath- 
er, and tax them five dollars for making this examination? 
But the Senator says it is a policy of their own. 1 believe it 
to be an unconstitutional act. At any rate. I know it to be an 
unjust and unfair one; and I put that act among the other 
acts of aggression that the people of this country are subjected 
to by the slave system. No right, no interest, can stand for a 
moment, when the interests of slavery are involved. 

Sir, what are the facts before the country to-day? Is it not 
true that men are arrested in many of the Southern States 
who are travelling upon their business? that laboring men are 
arrested, insulted, and punished? that men are banished from 
their hearths and homes? that laws are being passed to sell 
colored men into slavery unless they leave their native States? 
Has not Arkansas passed an act of that character ? Has not 
such an act just been arrested by the veto of the Governor 
of .Missouri? Has not Judge Catron denounced those laws aa 
a proposition to work an oppression and outrage? To-day, in 
the Southern States of this Union, our mails may be opened. 
Is a Senator on this side of the Chamber safe in nearly half 
the States of this Union? I say to you. to-day, what Senators 
around me will bear witness to, that our franks are not safe in 
many of the States of this Union. Is not this a violation of 
the right of free speech, the right of freedom of the press, and 
a violation of the sanctity of the mails? Are not these ag- 
gressions upon the rights of American citizens? Are they not 
the grossest aggressions— aggressions that would mark any 
Government on earth where they existed as a despotism? 

But, sir, the Senator from Mississippi said, in the course of 
his remarks, that, when I referred to the passage of a slave- 
code in Xew Mexico, I said what I could not have known to 
be the case. I have the letter of the Delegate of that Terri- 
tory, and it reads : 

" At the solicitation of General R. Davis, of Mississippi, I 
now write you, requesting you to draw up a law for the pro- 
tection of property in slaves in New Mexico, and cause it to 
be passed by our Legislature." 

Then the request is, that this law, when passed, shall be sent 
to the Southern newspapers, and sent very quickly to the New 
York Het-ald. T'his letter is addressed by the Delegate from 
New Mexico to the Secretary of that Territory, requesting him 
to draw up and pass such a law, and this at the request of 
General R. Davis, of Mississippi. 

But the Senator from Mississippi suggested that the Northern 
Democracy, in case we have a contest, will, in the language 
of General Cushing, "throttle" us in our own States. Now, 
sir, I should like to have an understandinf^on this subject. I 
want to know from the Senator from Mississippi, whether, in 
the event of the happening of the contingency to which cer- 
tain Senators look, the election of a Republican President, 
and an attempt is made to go out of the Union, or, rather, 
following the suggestion of the Senator from North Carolina, 
to stay here, and hod on to the Capitol, to engage in a bloody 
struggle, he is authorized to speak for the Democracy of my 
State, and say they will sustain him and the gentlemen with 
whom he acts ? Have they authorized him to speak for them, 
and to answer his friends that they will "throttle us where we 
stand?" 

Mr. Davis. TheSenator asks me a question, and, ifhewlshea 
me to answer it now, I will answer it, of course. I suppose he 
could hardly have expected any other answer than that which 
I must necessarily give, that I have no authority to speak for 
the Democracyof Massachusetts. It seems to be almost a su- 
perfluous question. My reference to General Cushing was to 
an expression which he used in a speech made and published 
in Massachusetts, and I considered him very good authority 
for those of whom he spoke. 

Mr. Wn„soN. Mr. President, General Cushing is very good 
authority for himself at the time he makes a declaration. He 
came to these Halls about twenty-five years ago, and he made 
the llous^ of Representatives ring with his eloquence against 
what he was pleased to call the aggressions of the South ; and 
whenever Massachusetts was assailed— and she was assailed 



14: 



then as she is now— he came to her defence. "When she was 
taunted with love of liberty, he said he gloried in it, for anti- 
slavery was but the synonym for love of liberty. General 
Gushing has seen fit to change his views, and at the present 
time he is certainly the greatest agitator we have in New Eng- 
land, making speeches remarkable for their intemperate zeal, 
writing the most singular letters, some of which I have before 
me ; and I must confess my utter amazement that a gentleman 
of the very large intelligence of General Gushing should pen 
letters of such an inflammatory and ridiculous character. 
This phrase, "throttle us," is one of his imprudent declara- 
tions, which only excite the amusement of the people in Mas- 
sachusetts. 

But, sir, this is not the first time this idea has been thrown 
out during these debates, that the Democracy of the North 
will take care of us if such a contest should arise. I should 
like to know whether the Democratic Senators and Represent- 
atives from the North will rise in their places here, and say 
that, in the event of the election in November next to the 



Presidency of the Senator from New York [Mr. Seward], or 
the Senator from Maine [Mr. Fessenden], or anv other of the 
Senatoi-s about me, or any of the public men who are the ac- 
cepted leaders of the Republican party, the administration 
will not be permitted to come into power, and the Union be 
dissolved ? I want to know if those Senators are ready to 
pledge the support of the Northern Democrats to that policy ? 
If so, I should like to have them put the assurance upon the 
records of the Senate. Do the Democratic Senators from the 
North intend to aid those who are now menacing the Union? 
Sir, if Democratic Senators from the loyal North and West 
intend to give aid to those who are now menacing the unity 
of the Republic, if the Representatives of the Northern De- 
mocracy in these Ghambers have given assurances that when 
the contest comes, if come it must, for the preservation of that 
Union which makes us one people, they will throttle us in our 
tracks, let them now put their intentions upon the records of 
the country. Let them speak for themselves. 



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FOR THE CAMPAIGN OF 1860. 



ISTo. 1. 

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of New York, February, 1860. — Price, per single copy, 2 cents; per dozen copies, 20 cents; per 
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Albany, February, 1860, 



EVENING JOTTENAL TRACTS.-No. 4. 



FeEEDOM ISTaTIOI^AL SlAYEEY SECTIOlSrAL 



SPEECH 



OF THE 



HON. S. H. HAMMOND, 



OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH SENATE DISTRICT, 



ON THE 



aOVEE^OR^S MESS^aE, 



m SENATE, FEBRUARY, 1860. 



ALBANY: 

WEED, PARSONS & CO., PRINTERS AND STEREOTYPERS. 

1860. 



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SPEECH 



HON. S. H. HAMMOND, 



TWENTY-SEVENTH SENATE DISTRICT. 



■ IN SENATE— Februaey, 1860. 

Senator LAWRENCE, of the 1st District, hav- 
ing spoken against the position taken by the 
Crovernor in his Annual Message, on the subject 
of Slavery, 

Mr. HAMMOND replied as follows t 
I thank the Senator from the 1st for bringing 
the subject of our federal relations before the 
Senate. By federal relations, sir, I mean the 
relations between the States and the people of 
the several States. I thank him for the broad 
range he has taken in this discussion ; and while 
the difference between «s is world-wide, I can do 
justice to the ability if not the good taste of his 
effort. And yet, sir, I had hoped that this irre- 
pressible conflict would not have been precipita- 
ted upon us here during the present session. But 
it is our destiny to encounter it everywhere. It 
is above, beneath and around us ; and, sir, since 
come it must, I again thank the gentleman for 
ushering it in. Take notice, sir, and let it be re- 
corded for reference, that this slavery agitation 
has not been introduced here by republicans. 
The call of the clans has been sounded by demo- 
cratic bugles ; the first blow has come from de- 
mocratic hands. Let no man, then, charge us as 
being the agitators. 

Sir, perhaps it is best that this great question be- 
tween freedom and slavery should be discussed on 
this floor, and at this time. It is in the hearts of 
the people everywhere. It goes ringing from the 
Gulf to the great lakes — from the rock-bound 
coast of New England across the continent, to 
mingle with the sound of the waves that lave the 
Pacific coast. Sir, there is some fear, some dan- 
ger in this agitation ; but there is vastl}' more of 
hope. We can look through the mist and cloud 
that hangs over this confederacy to-day, and see in 
the future a strength as enduring, a progress as 
matchless, as in the past. Nations, sir, have their 
ague-chills, and we are suffering one of the parox- 
isms that belong to ours. But there is in this 



young country a recuperative power, a consti- 
tutional vigor, so to speak, that will carry us safely 
through ; and though to-day may be one of dark' 
ness and storm, the glory of the sunlight will 
be all over the earth again to-morrow. 

Time was, sir, when we said there was no 
North, no South, no East, no West. That time 
has passed away. The East and the West have 
drifted to the North, and the North and the South 
have grown to be gigantic antagonisms, rearing 
their vast proportions against each other in a 
hostility that threatens the upheaval of the Union, 
and, strange as it will sound in history, a hostil- 
ity laased upon a fundamental difference on the 
great question of human liberty. Strange, sir, 
is it not, that in this free country — the freest, 
most progressive and prosperous in the round 
world, surrounded and protected by more guar- 
anties of freedom, more safeguards against ty- 
ranny, where human genius has the widest range, 
human enterprise the broadest scope, and human 
energy the fewest obstacles in the way of its pro- 
gress of any nation under the whole heavens, 
having too a glorious history made up of trials 
heroically endured, and triumphs gloriously won, 
— that even this great republic should, in the 
midst of its career of prosperity and progress, be 
in danger of being wrecked by a conflict having 
for its object the perpetuation and spread, on the 
one hand, and the limitation, on the other, of 
human slavery ! — that the free people of this 
free country should be ready to clutch each oth- 
er's throats over the mightiest oppression that 
the sun or the stars ever shone upon I 

I said, that perhaps it is well to discuss this 
great question in this chamber, and at this time. 
What we may say here will go out to the world 
as in some measure the sentiments and opinions 
of the people of this great State whom we repre- 
sent. Sir, there is need of a truthful representa- 
tion of those sentiments and opinions, that the 
people of other States may know the streagth 



and volume ol tnat current in favor of free 
thought, free institutions, free labor, and free 
soil, that is sweeping over the greatest in this 
great confederation of States. Sir, it is time that 
the truth should he spoken. It is time that the 
calumny of our opponents, in our own and other 
States, who have maligned the people of New 
York, should te refuted by a calm but firm and 
frank avowal of a sentiment that pervades all 
hearts in this free State. Sir, I care not what 
Democracy may say, speaking through its or- 
gans. I care not what demagogues may say, on 
this floor or elsewhere. I care not what your 
professional orators, your learned lawyers, whose 
sympathies have been dried up by delving among 
tlie dust and rubbish of ancient and the more 
brilliant sophisms of modern laws, may say on 
this subject. I speak, sir, what you and I do 
know, that in this State the love of freedom and 
hatred of oppression, whatever shape it may as- 
sume, is organic in the hearts of our people, as 
pervading as the air we breathe, as universal as 
the liglit by day or the darkness by night. Sir, 
1 si)eak not now of political parties, nor of poli- 
tical organizations. I speak of the people, and 
of the whole people. They love fi-eedom, and 
hate oppression and wrong. They love freedom 
and hate slavery ; and that man, reared and edu- 
cated in this State, is false to himself, recreant to 
the impulses of his own heart, a traitor to his 
own instincts, who denies this living fact. On 
this great fundamental principle, all are agreed; 
and though we may wrangle over the manner of 
manifesting our love of freedom and hatred of 
slavery, still the fact remains, and the world, our 
sister States, should be made to understand it. 
On this question, the popular mind is made up. 
Argument is thrown away upon us. We have 
gone back to first principles, and taken our stand 
on the side of Christianity, on the side of pro- 
gress, on the side of civilization, and in defence 
of human rights. Calumny will not move us ; 
denunciation, threats, will not intimidate us. The 
spirit of the age, the popular sentiment through- 
out the world, is with us. The differences be- 
tween the people of this State and the propagan- 
dists of human slavery, those who would make 
it an outspreading and progressive institution, 
are wide as the poles, deep as the foundations 
of right, and eternal as God. I repeat, sir, I am 
not now speaking of the Republican Party, but 
of the Peo^Je. I speak not the sentiment of my- 
self or my political associates alone, but of a 
sentiment that nestles in the heart of every man. 
Even the Senator from the 1st, with all his pro- 
fessions of nationality, all his party subserviency 
to the interests of Slavery, notwithstanding his 
association with the mouthing patriotism that is 
shaped by cotton bales and burrows in the sweet- 
ness of hogsheads of sugar, even my friend has 
not been able wholly to crush the divinity that 
stirs within him. Even he has been compelled 
to yield a tribute, cold and reluctant and unwil- 
ling to be sure, but still a tribiute to that senti- 
ment in favor of free institutions which is well- 
ing up all over the State. 

But, Sir, it is one thing to have the humanity 
to feel, and another the courage to express the 
sentiment that is in us. It is one thing to Icnow 
the right, and another to possess the boldness to 
do it. I have said. Sir, that this sentiment in 
favor of freedom is universal throughout the 
north ; but, Sir, it shames me to say, that there 



are craven spirits who cowed by the arrogan* 
pretension of the domineering propagandists of 
human slavery, and under the lash of party drhl, 
meanly suppress the instincts of their nature, and 
stultify their own convictions of right 

"For so much Irash as a man may grasp thus." 

Sir, I can respect a man who has been edu- 
cated in the midst of Slavery, who has grown 
up under the influence, imbibed the sentiments, 
and become familiarized with that absolu- 
tism, which is the fundamental principle of 
a slaye code. I can respect such a man as an 
apologist for the existence of slave institutions. 
I can excuse him for advocating their extension. 
I can forgive him, even though he insists, that it 
is not wrong to buy and sell men ; but, Sir, I 
haA'e no chanty for, I cannot fellowship, the 
man who, in these times of etilightenment, and 
in this free State, with the light of discussion 
blazing all around him, with freedom to talk, 
freedom to reason, freedom to think ui)on this 
great subject, meanly suppresses his convictions, 
speaking with bated breath and walking with a 
cringing gait ; surrendering in coward fear hi3 
manhood; bartering his birthright of independ- 
ence ; his heritage of freedom for a mess of pot- 
tage, compared with which, that for which Esau 
sold his birthrigh was a monarch's feast. Sir, I 
can respect a slaveholder ; there are honorable 
men, patriotic men. Christian men among them. 
Men who are conscientious in their pro-slavery 
faith ; but, sir, language fails to express my 
measureless scorn of a northern doughface. Let 
no man accuse me now of using language unbe- 
coming this place. We have heard three hun- 
dred thousand voting men, citizens of our State, 
men to the manner of freedom born, denounced 
as traitors. We have heard ourselves maligned, 
the Republican Party of this State, and all the 
North, denounced as traitors and rebels to the 
constitution. We have listened calmly to this 
gigantic lie (pardon the use of this strong old 
Saxon wm-d), reaching through an hour of fo- 
rensic essay ; and are we to choose our words, to 
select gentle phrases, when we hurl back this 
stupendous calumny upon our traducers. 

But, sir, let us go back to the subject of this 
discussion. I said, that- the sentiment in favor 
of free institutions pervaded all the North. That 
it was in the heart of every man in whom was a 
living soul. True, there are those who in cow- 
ard fear, close their lips against the utterance of 
the thought that is in them. True, there are 
others who, in their craven dread of party drill, 
the sneer of demagogues, or their greed for of- 
ficial spoil, deny or seek to pervert this enno- 
bling sentiment, who 

"Bf^nd the pregnant hinges of the knee, 
That thrift may follow fawniog.'* 

But, sir, that sentiment is in the hearts of all, 
and it will not be clean crushed ont. 

Sir, it is this love of free institutions, of free 
thought, free speech, free discussion, free labor 
and free soil ; of making fieedom and the spread 
of free institutions, the leading feature of the 
policy of this great republic, that form the 
foundation stones and the strong pillars of the 
Republican Party. Sir, that party was not an 
accident. It was not tlie work of intriguants. 
It was not the creation of politicians. It was a 
necessity growing out of the exigencies of tlie 
times. It was a logical sequence of the genius 



and spirit of the age. It was more, even than 
this. It was but the carrying out to their re- 
mote but inevitable results, those principles \ 
which underlaid our Revolution itself. The ' 
spirit, sir, that moved our fathers to break the 
yoke of kings ; that proclaimed that all men 
were by nature free; that they were endowed 
with certain inalienable rights, among wiiich 
were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness 
was not a myth, but a living, and immortal entity. 
However it may have slumbered in ihe past, it 
became flesh and dwelt among us. The great 
truths which that spii-it dictated, and which 
were embodied in our Declaration of Independ- 
ence, were not metaphysical abstractions, were 
not " glittering generalities," but living and 
everlasting facts. They were more than mere 
profession — they were articles of living faith ; 
and as intelligence increased, and the value of 
freedom developed itself, these great truths have 
grown into a higher appreciation, and received 
a deeper sanction. 

They teach, us, sir, the value of human rights, 
and they rouse us to a hatred of oppression and 
wrong. They teach us to estimate the value of 
a man, not in dollars and cents, not by the price 
he will bring in market, but because he is a man, 
wearing the image and stamped with the signet 
of the Almighty, having within liim a reasoning 
spirit and a soul that is immoital. 

Sir, these great truths have a practical and ir- 
resistible influence over human progress, and 
they have been moving us forward for genera- 
tions. They are gathering force and volume al- 
ways. They created the necetssity for, and tlien 
fashioned the Republican Party. Call it, if you 
please, the fragments of pre-existing parties. Be 
it so. Those parties were shivered b_y collision 
with these great truths. Call it, if you please, 
the shattered remains of old political organiza- 
tions. Be it so. It was these great truths that 
destroyed the cohesiveness of those old organiza- 
tions. These great truths, sir, had a mission of 
destruction as well as of reconstruction — to kill 
as well as to make alive. They destroyed pre- 
existing parties, to collect the scattered fragments 
and breathe into them new and immoital life. 
They killed the old political organizations to 
make alive a new one, that should be purged of 
moral cowardice, and have the courage to stand 
up boldly and always for the right. 

Sir, in the heat of discussion great men often 
use expressions which, though uttered without 
premeditation, are so pregnant with meaning, so 
full or philosophy, so in accordance with the 
genius of the age, that the people take them up, 
ai\d convert them into proverbs. 

It was thus, sir, with Mr. Seward, when he 
used the expression which the Senator from 
the first repeated with a sneer, and which now 
goes ringing from Maine to Texas, and from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific coast. There was nothing 
new in the idea. It was the same conflict that 
has been waging since history lifted the curtain 
from the everlasting past. A conflict old as hu- 
man traditions. The conflict between right and 
wrong — between human rights and imperial 
sway — between freedom and oppression. It was 
this "irresistible conflict" which impelled the 
sturdy barons of England, with sharp swords in 
their hands, to force Magna Charta from King 
John. It was this same irrepressible conflict 
that sent the Mayflower bounding over the ocean, 



with her pilgrim exiles seeking a refuge and a 
home in a wilderness country beyond the reach 
of the oppressor's arm. It was this irrepressible 
conflict that gave this great republic a place 
among the nations of the earth, and made us, 
the people of these States, free, independent, 
self-governing and self-governed men. It falsified 
the traditions of old, bearded and hoary with 
age as they were, that self-government was a de- 
lusion, and republican rule a fable. Sir, it was 
this same irrepressible conflict, eternal in the 
past, as it will be in the future, between right 
and wrong, between freedom and oppression, 
between progress into a broader and better light 
and retrogression that created the necessity for a 
Republican Party, that gave it vitality, power, 
triumph. 

It is this same irrepressible conflict that will 
carry this party forward to greater power and 
a more enduring triumph. 

Sir, I heard the Senator from the first pro- 
phecy its downfall. It is not the first predic- 
tion of a lying prophet that has been or will be 
falsified by the logic of time. Democracy has 
more than once foretold its destruction, even 
when itself went down before the sweep of its 
battle-axe. It still lives, and will continue to 
live till its great mission shall have been accom- 
plished ; and woe to the puny spoilsman, woe to 
the banner-men of slavery, woe to the mouthing 
demagogues who for the sake of a selfish and 
groveling ambition would sow discord between 
the States, and scatter strife where all should be 
peace. They will be before it like chaff be- 
fore the tempest. They will be under its feet 
like straw upon the threshing floor. 

Sir, this Republican Party loves freedom and 
intends to maintain it. It loves free territory 
and intends to protect it. It is in everlasting 
hostility to human slavery, and it intends to 
avow, and does avow it always. But, sir, it loves 
the Constitution and the Union, and intends to 
regard all the sanctions of the one and be firm 
in its loyalty to the other. It not only intends 
to observe all the sanctions of the Constitution, 
but intends that others shall be made to regard 
them too. It loves the Union, and is resolved 
that its strong arm shall sustain and preserve it. 
It loves the rights of the States, and intends to 
sustain them. It loves State sovereignty, and 
intends to perpetuate it. 

Sir, on this great issue of slavery it is 
frank and free of speech, while it will be firm 
and impregnable in action. It is accused of in- 
terfering with the domestic institutions of the 
States. It is false. It is accused of interfering 
with the rights of the citizens of other States. 
It is false. It is accused of encouraging invasion 
of other States. It is false. It is accused of in- 
citing insurrection and a servile war in other 
States. It is false — ten thousand times false — 
and he is recreant alike to justice, to patriotism, 
and to truth, who utters the infamous calumny. 

Sir, the Republican Party recognizes the right 
of every State, from the hour of its admission 
into the Union, to establish or abolish slavery 
within its own domain, and it denies that any 
power on earth outside of such State has any 
right to interfere. The Republican Party regards 
slavery as a State institution, and is ready to 
protect it within the States, against invasion from 
any quarter. When danger shall threaten a 
slave ^tate, whether through invasion from witlfc- 



out or rebellion within, the Republican party of 
the State of New York will be prompt in its aid 
of money and men to assist her. 

The Republican Party of the State of New 
York makes the sovereignty of the States a fun- 
damental article in its creed. It will be found 
even with the foremost when that sovereignty 
shall be in danger, whether that danger assail 
South Carolina or New York. It regards State 
sovereignty, and that in no restricted sense, as 
the palladium of our liberties. As a State, we 
have the exclusive power over the subject of 
slavery within our own borders. We can estab- 
lish it or abolish it as and when we please, and 
no human power has any right to interfere with 
us. We will permit no human power to interfere 
with us ; and what the Republican Party claims 
for itself in our own State, it accords in a spirit 
of cheerful and earnest frankness to every other 
State. If Virginia chooses to perpetuate slavery 
in her own domain, that, sir, is her business, and 
not ours ; and hers is all the glory and all the 
shame of the policy she chooses to pursue. We 
have no right, and no disposition, to interfere in 
dictating her course or coercing her policy. No 
Republican has ever proposed to interfere with 
her. It is false, sir, wickedly false, that the Re- 
publican Party, or any member of it, has ever 
proposed to do so. There are madmen, frantic 
zealots in all countries, and they have existed in 
all ages. You will find them at the South, fren- 
zied in their zeal for slavery and mad for a disso- 
lution of the Union. These, sir, nestle in the bo- 
som of Democracy, and find no word or sign of 
repulsion. You will find them at the North, 
frenzied in their zeal against slavery ; but, sir, 
they do not affiliate with Republicanism. They 
are meteors skiving through the political heavens, 
having no orbit, belonging to no system, flashing 
out of the gloom only to disappear again into 
the darkness. 

Sir, will the Senator from the 1st go further 
than this in the protection of State rights or in 
vindication of State sovereignty 1 Will he ask 
the Republican Party to go further in that direc- 
tion 1 Sir, I said the Republican Party loved 
freedom and hates slavery ; and frankness de- 
mands the avowal that, while it regards slavery 
as a State institution, and is ready to protect it 
there, it will never consent that it shall spread 
one inch beyond the boundary of the States. It 
will never consent that one inch of territory now 
free shall be surrendered to its sway, or that its 
shadow shall ever darken one foot of the nation- 
al domain. It will never consent that soil once 
consecrated to freedom shall be desecrated by the 
footprint of a slave. It will never consent to the 
acquisition of another acre of slave territory, 
whether by conquest or by purchase. It will 
never consent to the admission of another slave 
State into the Union, otherwise than as such 
State may be made by a division of Texas into 
two or more States. This, sir, is the Republican 
creed, as I understand it, upon the subject of 
slavery. Upon this ground the Republican Party 
will stand in 1860, and from which it can neither 
be persuaded nor driven. If defeated in 1860, it 
will stand there in 1864, and in 1868, and in 1872, 
and always, until this great conflict shall have 
ended by the triumph or annihilation of freedom. 

Sir, like the Democracy of the South, we re- 
pudiate the Douglas idea of Squatter Sovereign- 
ty } and my friend from the 1st may as well 



make up his mind that his theory on this subject 
is a doomed theory. The South repudiates it, 
and the North repudiates it. Freedom repudi- 
ates it, and Slavery repudiates it ; and between 
these opposing forces, the plastic Doughfaces 
who sustain it will be squeezed into political an- 
nihilation. The Republican Party, sir, holds 
with the Governor that the Territories are under 
the rule of Congress, and must continue to re- 
main so until they enter the Union as States. 

Such, sir, is the simple creed of the Republican 
Party, in its great and essential features. But 
there are other opinions which it holds. It 
holds that slavery is and can be the creature only 
of positive law. The relation of master and slave, 
is one sanctioned by no natural law. It is oppos- 
ed to all sound philosophy of human government 
and human right. It can exist only by the rule 
of the strongest ; and its foundations rest upon 
that axiom of tyrants, that might makes right. 
We hold, that by the common law of the world, 
no man can hold property in man. That pro- 
perty, sir, can only be acquired by legislative 
enactment. Hence; there can be no slavery 
withont a statute creating and establishing it ; 
and hence again, there can be no slavery in the 
territories, unless it shall be established there 
by a law of Congress. You may be sure, sir, 
that no such law can ever be passed, while the 
Republican Party has a voice that shall influence 
the national councils. 

And now, sir, will my friend from the first, tell 
me which article of the Republican creed is in 
violation of the Constitution 7 Will he point me 
to the clause with which it is in conflict 1 Sir, 
I desire to keep on constitutional grounds. 
Much as I hate slavery, I love the Constitution 
more. I desire to be enlightened as to my con- 
stitutional duties, and the constitutional rights 
of my fellow-citizens, with whom I may differ 
on this great question, involving the prosperity 
and progress of our common country. Sir, I do 
not want assertion. I want the book, the article 
and tlie section, that I may read and study it. 
We have plenty of assertion, plenty of dictation, 
plenty of blustering, and plenty of assumption of 
wisdom about the constitutional rights of slavery, 
I am sick and tired of all this. I want the 
article and the section. 

Are we asked, sir, why the political contest of 
the times, have been narrowed down to this 
issue between freedom and slavery ; between the 
progress of free institutions and the progress of 
slave institutions 1 I answer, that it has been 
impossible to avoid it. The irrepressible con- 
flict is our destiny, and it is upon us now. The 
issues that divided the old parties have passed 
away. They were ephemeral in their nature, so 
far as they were practical, relating to the tem- 
porary policy of the country in its foreign and 
domestic relations. Those issues have drifted 
away on the currents of progress, or been passed 
in the onward march of our common country. 
Measures that divided the opinions of our peo- 
ple, have become so established, that no sensible 
man questions their wisdom ; or so buried in the 
dead past, that no sane man would hope to re- 
vive them. Time, the great living test of nation- 
al policy, has settled, by its resistless demonstra- 
tions, the questions which agitated the country, 
and arrayed political organizations against each 
other in times past. They have had their day, 
and have passed into history. Sir, I said this 



irrepressible conflict was eternal as right and 
wrong; and while all other issues have been 
passing away, this conflict has been gathering 
strength and power. True, sir, we have sought 
to avoid it. We have put it away on the right 
hand, and shoved it aside on the left ; we have 
pushed it away from before us, and thrust it 
back behind us. But it would not be put off". 
The spirit of slavery is restless as it is wrong. It 
will not leave us alone ; it will not be let 
alone. It troubled our fathers when this 
great union was formed. It troubled the 
sages and patriots who framed the federal 
constitution. It troubled the statesmen who 
guided this country in its infancy ; and they saw 
with prophetic vision the mightier troubles 
which it would occasion in the years to come. 
It was present when Louisiana was purchased. 
It reared its head higher, and spoke with a voice 
more potential in 1820, when Missouri was added 
to the Union. It stood in still loftier and more 
compact stature, when Texas was annexed, and 
in 1850 when it demanded to be nationalized. 
It was matured in strength, in 1854, when it de- 
manded of a Democratic administration and a 
subservient Democratic Congress, that every 
barrier standing in the way of its progress 
towards supremacy, should be swept away. It 
stands now, sir, in all its giant proportions, con- 
fident in its power, arrogant, overbearing, turbu- 
lent, reckless of violence, and careless of results ; 
demanding the first and prominent place in the 
politics and policy of the country. It has 
crowded every other issue out of the political 
arena, and stands there at last, alone, armed and 
panopled for battle, determined on expansion, 
and defiant of opposition. I repeat, sir, the irre- 
pressible conflict is upon us ; but it is without 
our fault. It has been forced upon us, and we 
must sit down in craven silence, or fight it out to 
the bitter end. 

Sir, do you comprehend the length and 
breadth of this conflict, the stupendous issues 
dependent upon its results ? Did the Senator from 
the first, when he swung over to the side of 
slavery, and in his youthful zeal charged upon 
the freedom-loving men of the North — upon you 
and me, sir, upon every man around this circle; 
upon every man of his State who takes sides 
with freedom in the controversy thus forced 
upon us — the crime of treason against the Con- 
stitution and the Union; did he comprehend 
the nature of this conflict ? Did he appreciate 
the character of the charges he so recklessly 
made, or the nature of the associations into 
which he so madly plunged ? Sir, I will not 
speak of slavery in a humanitarian sense, I will 
not discuss its moral or religious bearing upon 
those who exercise or those who are subjected to 
its sway. To do so would be, in this age of light 
and truth, to insult your understanding. But I 
do propose to speak of it with reference to its 
political influences upon the prosperity and true 
glory of this great country, upon the honor and 
the perpetuity of our free institutions, and the 
integrity of the Union, with reference to the civil 
and social rights of the free white men of this 
nation. It is right that we should do so. It is 
necessary that all may comprehend the nature 
and inevitable tendencies of an institution that 
claims precedence over freedom and free institu- 
tions. 

Sir, who will contradict me when I say, that 



the system of slavery is at war with every prin- 
ciple of republican freedom — with the whole 
theory and structure of our institutions — that it 
is a living reproach to our country, falsifying all 
our professions of regard for human rights. We 
boast to the world of our love of freedom. We 
are pointed to our three millions of men, created 
in the image of God, whom we have robbed of 
their humanity, and whom we buy and sell as 
chattels in the market. Shall we sink still 
deeper in the world's estimation by consenting to 
the spread of an institution which belies every 
profession of our love of liberty; which is a 
perpetual libel upon our theory of government, 
and a living refutation of the great truths em- 
bodied in our Declaration of Independence ? 

But, sir, consider the effect of this institution 
upon the physical prosperity of a nation. Vir- 
ginia, at the close of the revolutionary war, was 
the leading State of the Union. She was first in 
population, and richest in resources. Her cli- 
mate was the most salubrious, and her soil the 
most productive of all the States. She had har- 
bors second to none on the Atlantic coasts ; the 
best water power to propel machinery. Her 
mountains are full of coal, and her hills of iron. 
Her rivers broad and navigable, or easily made 
so. With all these advantages, where is Virginia 
now? States that were then but a wilderness, on 
almost every acre of which the old forests stood 
in all their prestine grandeur and primeval 
gloom, are away beyond her in population, in 
wealth, in enterprise, in everything that makes 
up the material jTOsperity of a nation. From 
being the first she has glided down to the fifth or 
sixth position in the scale of States, and every 
decade she takes a downward step. Her soil, sir, 
is becoming exhausted, her people enervated, 
lacking in energy, in enterprise, in the power of 
progress in a comparative sense, a blight spread- 
ing wider and wider, barrenness creeping further 
and further across her once generous and pro- 
ductive soil, and desolation being written in 
legible characters over district after district of 
her once fruitful bosom; and why is all this ? 
Sir, study the philosophy of Slavery and you 
will understand it. " Thou shalt not muzzle the 
ox that treads out the corn," is a command as 
binding in its typical sense as is that which de- 
clares '-thou shalt not steal," and the penalty 
affixed is the increasing barrenness of the soil 
where that command is violated. 

Again, sir, look over the map of Virginia, and 
trace out her canals and her railroads. Measure 
them in distance, and calculate their cost. 
Where are her factories, where her workshops? 
Does the smoke of her furnaces go columning 
up to the sky t Where a stream comes down 
from the mountain, or a river leaps over a preci- 
pice, does the clank of machinery mingle with 
their roar? Has she laid her hand upon the run- 
ning waters, and made them utilitarian, com- 
pelled them to grind corn, to throw the shuttle 
and spin? Sir, the little State of Vermont, 
whose narrow territory is cloven by that range of 
mountains that stand up in everlasting barren- 
ness, but eternal verdure to the sky, has more 
miles and a larger amount in cost of public im- 
provement? "ihan the great State of Virginia, 
You will scarcely find a factory or a workshop, 
worthy of the name, in all Virginia. You will 
find the mountain stream unchained, tne plung- 
ing river free, with all their motive power mt- 



8 



employed. You will see no smoke of furnaces, 
no blazing forges. And why? Virginia was a 
great State, the greatest in this great confederacy 
of States, the mother of heroee, of statesmen, of 
Presidents, and why is she thus laggard in the 
race of progress. Sir, study the pliilosophy of 
slavery and you will understand it. What is 
thus true of Virginia is true of every State where 
slavery is a cherished institution. It is the trail 
of the serpent over them all. Its improvidence 
impoverishes the soil. Its inertia hangs like an 
incubus upon enterprise. Its enforced and un- 
paid . labor breaks down the energies of the 
masses. It is in violation of a great fundamen- 
tal law tliat prosperity can, sir, attach only to a 
people where compensation follows physical ex- 
ertion and the hope of reward stimulates toil. 

Sir, the line between the Free and the Slave 
States is as traceable in the difference in the 
thi-ift of the people, and the value of their lands, 
as it is by tlie monuments erected to divide 
them. Kentucky is a Slave State as prosperous 
as any, but her lands, equally productive with 
those of Ohio, are not more than half equal in 
value to those of the latter to-day. Missouri 
has a soil rich as that of Illinois, but the value 
of the land of the latter is, on the average, more 
than twice that of the former. And why '? 
Study the philosophy of Slavery, and you Avill 
understand it. 

Acrain, sir, Virginia has a broad seacoast, and 
as safe harbors as there are in the world. Where, 
sir, is the ocean comraei'ce of Virginia? where 
her Ships, her Steamers'? She has none, sir. 
The little State of Rhode Island, having but a 
single Representative in the lower House of 
Congress, has her Ships, her Steamers, and her 
external commerce is greater than that of Vir- 
ginia. And why 1 Study the philosophy of 
Slavery and you will understand it. 

Study, now sir, the educational statistics of 
Virginia. 1 speak of her, sir, because she 
claims to be the leading and most enlightened 
Slave State in the Union. The little State 
of Connecticut, little only in natural resources 
and in population, in a comparative sense, 
has an Education Fund nearly double that 
of the grent State of Virginia. Of the white 
population of Virginia, one in ten can neither 
read nor Avrite. Of those in Connecticut the ra- 
tio is as one to seventy-four, including even the 
foreign population within her borders. Connec- 
titu! sends out lier school teachers over all the 
Union, and her Missionaries over all the world — 
her Academies and Colleges are famed through- 
out this whole Confederacy — her scholars adorn 
the Science, and her writers the Literature of the 
world — every child reared within her Territory 
has the means of acquiring a substantial En- 
glish education, free of expense. Is it so in Vir- 
ginia? Let every tenth man and woman in that 
S'ate, who can neither read nor write, answer. 
What is thus true of Connecticut is true of al- 
most every Free State ; and what is thus true of 
Virginia is less than the truth of almost every 
other Slave State. In South Carolina, and that 
outside of the vice and degradation of the cities, 
is a rural white population of over 30,000, one- 
ni)ith of the whole population, so besotted and 
degraded, so demoralized and imbruited as to be 
the scorn of the slaves of the plantations in the 
neighborhood of which they are scattered. 
These, sir, are the descendants of those whom, a 



hundred years ago, before the foil blight and 
curse of Slavery had been developed, were small 
farmers, prosperous and intelligent in their way, 
but whose posterity has thus hopelessly degene- 
rated under the demoralizing influences of Sla- 
very. Do you ask, sir, why this should be so 1 
Study the philosophy of Slavery, and you will be 
answered. 

I have thus far spoken of the effects of slavery 
upon the material prosperity of the States in 
which it exists, and if I am asked, -'What is 
that to us ?" I answer, in all frankness, nothing. 
If I am asked again, " If those States choose to 
foster and uphold an institution which thus ob- 
structs their progress, what is that to us ?" I an- 
swer again, in all frankness, nothing. If Vir- 
ginia chooses to cling to the disease that is wast- 
ing her, she has the right to do so. It is her 
business, and not ours, and you or I have no 
right to interfere 

But when the question arises, as it has arisen, 
and is presented to us now, whether this demo- 
ralizing institution shall be an outspreading and 
progressive one, whether it shall be permitted to 
march forward into territory now free, carrying 
with it this blight of death into territory in 
which you and I, and our posterity, have an in- 
terest, under the sanction of national favor and 
the protection of Federal law, then, sir, I answer, 
that we have much, everything, to do with it. 
Wiien it is proposed to make the interests and 
the spread of slavery, and the protection of slave 
labor and slave property the great leading feature 
of our national policy , it comes home to us then, 
affects our honor and our rights, is within the 
sphere of our duties, and posterity will hold us 
responsible for our action. 

But, sir, there are other aspects in which this 
institution should be regarded. I speak of it 
still in a political sense, and of its beai'ing upon 
the matei'ial prosperity and social rights of 
the people of this country. Sir, the slave spirit 
is opposed to social order, turbulent, aggressive, 
regardless of legal and constitutional restraints, 
P'ounded upon the baldest violation of human 
rights, and sustained only by the law of the 
strongest, its imperial elements scoff at the re- 
straints of govenunental institutions. The Fe- 
deral Constitution guarantees freedom of opinion 
and of the press. Within the last four years, a 
citi25en of Virginia, occupying a respectable posi- 
tion, of untarnished character and undoubted 
loyalty to the Union, was hunted from his fami- 
ly and the State, because he attended as a dele- 
gate to the Republican Convention that nomin- 
ated John C. Fremont, and every paper in Vir- 
ginia under the influence of the slave power jus- 
tified the outrage. 

In Kentucky, the destruction of a free press 
and the cold blooded murder of its editor, are 
among the unavenged outrages of the lawless 
spirit of slavery. .j.-,. 

Sir, in what State south of Mason and Dixon'.^ 
line would your life or mine be safe, if the facts 
of our being members of the Republican Party, 
and held to the Republican faith, were known ? 
In which Southern State would the life of the 
Senator from the first be worth an hour's pur- 
chase, if he exercised the right of saying whau 
has become organic in his heart, that slavery is 
wrong, and wicked in principle, and hurtful to 
the prosperity of a country in practice ? Sir, 
accounts come to us every day, of insult and 



outrage to whicli free men of the North are sub- 
jected while traveling in the Southern States, for 
saying, or even thinking, greatly less than this in 
favor of freedom. 

Sir, che Constitution guarantees freedom of de- 
bate in Congress, that the persons of members 
shall be sacred from outrage, that they shall not 
be called to account for words spoken or language 
used in official discussion. 

A member of Congress, sir, stalked into the 
Senate chamber and clubbed down a Senator in 
his place, for speaking in defence of freedom and 
against the spread of slavery, in language beconi- 
mg a free man of the free North. Let no man sup- 
pose that the outrage of Brooks upon Senator 
Sumner was the sequence of a personal quarrel, 
that the felon blow was the result of personal 
hostility, incited by personal insult. It was the 
mad and lawless spirit of slavery, rioting in its 
normal violence, trampling upon human rights, 
scoffing at Constitutions, and stamping with its 
iron heel upon organic law. It was the absolut- 
ism of the slave spirit crushing freedom of 
opinion and of speech and debate by the strong 
arm of physical force. It was the cruel tyranny 
of the slave spirit, that would strike down human 
liberty everywhere, and stifle the voice of free- 
dom, even in blood- 
Sir, every press in the slave States justified 
this monstrous outrage. The Democracy of the 
South eulogised the perpetrator of it, and the 
Democracy of the north stood in craven silence 
with no word of condemnation. The slave spirit 
possessed the Southern Democracy, who applaud- 
ed the outrage, and it cowed the Northern Demo- 
cracy, who dared not disavow or condemn it. 

But all these outrages, great as they are, fur- 
nish no comparison wiih the gigantic villainy 
perpetrated by the Slave Power in the Territory 
of Kansas. That villainy is matter of history 
now ; and I speak of it only as an illustiation 
of tlie true genius and spirit of Slavery rioting 
in unrestraint, spreading itself in all its mon- 
strous proportions when unawed by the presence 
of a controlling power. That Territory, sir, was 
consecraied to freedom by a compact as solemn 
as language and circumstances could make it — a 
com()act possessing all the moral if not legal force 
of organic law. The Slave Power demanded 
the ab;ogation of that compact; and that de- 
mand, through the solidarity of the Slave De- 
mocracy of the South, aided by a craven acqui- 
escence on the part of the Democracy of the 
North, was conceded The Slave Power, having 
broken down this last barrier against its onward 
march, strode forward to take possession. It 
was met by the peaceful current of a free popu- 
lation. '*"It armed itself v/ith weapons of war. It 
organized ?.:med forces, and invaded that peace- 
ful Territory with hosts of ruffians who marked 
with desolation, with the corpses of murdered 
citizens and the smouldering ruins of burned 
homes, the path that they followed. Rapine and 
plunder went hand in hand wiih them. They 
took possession of the ballot-boxes, and voted 
themselves into ofiBce. They made legislators 
of themselves, and passed laws exceeding in 
atrocity even those of the Athenian tvrant. Thev 
burned cities and sacked towns. They robbed 
and murdered without mercy and without re- 
morse, and the Slave Power in Congress and out 
of it justified their enormities. The Slave spirit, 
sir, possessed itself of a venal and corrupt Ad- 



niiin'stration, and the cry of the opj)?'e-.^ed met 
with P<~> resi)onse from Washington. Worse tl;an 
tl.at, sir, the Administi'ation claimed to be De- 
mocratic. The great bulk of Democracy had 
conie to be aggregated in tiie Slave Stales; aiid 
at the biddinii' of ihe Slave Power, the might of 
the Administration was exerted in behalf of the 
ot)])ie.ssr.r, and justified and u])heid the gigantic 
outrage and wrong. Sii-, I said these ihinos have 
passed into history, and I thank God thati' is so. 
The record has been made up and sealed, and 
can no longer be falsified. Though tlmt great 
sitrugiiie for freedom in Kansas belongs now to 
ihe past, yet, sir, t];e mad raid of John Brown, 
that sent an ague chill of terror thi-illing through 
all ihe South, w;,s but the faint and dying echo 
< f the miglit'er ontrnges perpetrated by slavery 
on tlie people of Kansas. Ii was the insane 
vengear.ce of a man who had brooded over the 
stnpeiidous wronjis he had suffered till madness 
took jjo.ssession of his brain, and he regarded 
himself as the champion chosen of God to exter- 
minate slavery. 

Let us i)anse for one moment to inquire into 
the nature aiid extent of this " invasion " of 
Virginia, as it is termed. It is proper that we 
should do so, for it is one of the sins cliarged 
against the Republican party by the Ser)ator from 
the first. Sir, there are three hundi'ed thousand 
voting Republicans in New York — there are half 
a million in Ohio and Pennsylvania — there are 
hundreds of thousands in New England. Thiiik 
you, sir, that if these million in tl;ese States had 
conspired to invade atid revolutionize Virginia, 
to conquer her chivalry and capture her slaves, 
that an enter|)ri.:;e of such magnitude would 
have been entrusted to an army of seveiiteen 
white men and five negroes'? But, sir, John 
Brown and his twenty-one followers attacked and 
overcome a town, containing, it is said, some 
three thousand Virginiaiis. They took it with- 
out the loss of a mat! — without spilling otic drop 
of blood on either side. "Invasion from the 
North !" startled the sleepers from their dreams. 
" Invasion from the North ! " flashed along the 
telegraph wires and thundered along th.e rail- 
ways. Terror seized the heart of the Chivalry, 
and dismay sat in distortion on the face of all 
the South. There was spuri'ing in hot haste. 

"There was mounting 'monsc Graemes of the Netherby 
Clan, 
The Musgraves. the Ritgrieves, they roile and they ran, 
There was racing and chasing o'er Can^y Lee." 

The hair on the venerable head of the Presi- 
dent stood out like quills upon the fretful porcu- 
pine, as the cry " Invasion from the Noi th " went 
echoing along the Halls of the Executive Man- 
sion. The heart of Governor Wise died within 
him as the cry of "Invasion from the North " 
swept like the ciy of the Vulture over Virginia. 
Think, sir, of the extremity of that terror which 
could reduce the Governor's letters from six solid 
colutnns in the Riclnnond Inquirer to telearams 
of less than three lines in length ! And, sir, 
what was tnis " Itivasion from the Nortli ! " that 
shook the whole South with an Jigiie chill of dis- 
may and fear 1 What numbered this army 
which was to u])heave the civic and social insti- 
stitutions of Virginia, and lead her Chivalry 
away captive'? Seventeen white men and five 
negroes 1 

But, sir, the cry of " Invasion from the 
North " went rinititiii like the trumpet call of the 



10 



Avenging Angel through the South. The Presi- 
dent ordered down to Harper's Ferry an army 
of Federal Marines from Washington ; and Go- 
vernor Wise ordeied up an army of State troops 
from Norfolk and another from Richmond. And 
Maryland sent up another army from Baltimore, 
Banners flaunted in the breeze — bayonets glis- 
tened and sharp swords flashed in the sunlight — 
the tramp, tramp of armed hosts was along all 
the highways. All these military divisions were 
converging upon a common centre, and that 
centre was the ill-fated Harper's Ferry. That 
doomed town was sun-ounded by a cordon of 
Southern Chivalry, waitiug only the word to 
rush together in the courage of its great heart 
to the slaughter and carnage of battle. 

Do you remember, sir, that " Charge of the 
Light Brigade " at Balaklava, upon the Russian 
Batteries— that charge, sir, which gave immor- 
tality to the " six hundred " of the bravest men 
whom the world ever looked upon, while it con- 
signed five hundred and thirty of them to a 
bloody grave — that charge which should blast 
the name of the man who ordered it with eternal 
infamy 1 Sir, do you remember Tennison's beau- 
tiful lines 1 
" Half a league, half a league, half a league onward ! 

Into the valley of death rode the six hundred. 
* Forward the Light Brigade ; ' 'charge for the guns ! ' he 
said — 

Into the valley of death rode the six hundred ! " 

Do you remember, sir, what followed 1 
" Cannon to right of thera I 

Cannon to left of them ! 

Cannon in front of them 
Volleyed and thundered! 

Stormed at by shot and shell. 

Boldly they rode, and weli, 

Into the jaws of death! 

Into the mouth of Hell 
Kode the six hundred ! " 
What was the courage of the " Light Brigade," 
the glorious "six hundred," compared with the 
immortal daring of the President's Marines and 
Virginia's Chivalrythat surrounded the fated town 
of Hai-per's Ferry 1 The word was given: 
" Charge, Chester, charge ! Ou, Stanley, on ! " 
And this cordon of death closed like the rush 
of mighty waters. The armed hosts rushed to- 
gether like the collapse of mountains, till their 
very bayonets crossed. And what, think you, 
sir, ihey had inclosed in that fated circle 1 Seven- 
teen white men and five negroes — dead, wounded 
and missing ! Not a white man more, not one 
negro less ! Sir, was there ever before enacted, 
in the face of an intelligent people, such a stu- 
pendous farce ! 

Sir, I do not stand here to justify, but to de- 
nounce this insane raid of John Brown, upon 
Harper's Ferry. But, sir, I do not stand here 
to spit upon his grave, nor to heap infamy upon 
his name. God looks upon the heart in render- 
ing his retribution of good or evil. He whom 
Gov. Wise, even in the midst of his paroxysm of, 
revenge and terror, pronounced the bravest and 
most truthful man he ever saw, could not have 
been organically a bad man. John Brown, sir, 
sleeps in the grave, into which the hunt of ven- 
geance, and not the calm, firm course of justice 
consigned him. He has gone to a tribunal 
before which his accusers must meet him face to 
face; where human pride, power, influence 
might, have no voice, and where justice to the 
oppressed and the oppressor, the strong and the 
weak, the sooiler and the spoiled, is measured 



out by the standard of immaculate and eternal 
truth. 

"No further seek his merits to disclose, 
Nor drag his frailties from their dread abode, 
Where they alike in tender hope repose, 
The bosom of his father and his God." 

Sir, I have shown you what this spirit of 
Slavery is. I have shown you the organic ele- 
ments of the Slave Power, everywhere and al- 
ways. I have shown you its influence upon the 
material prosperity of the Slates wherein it ex- 
ists — its influence over the social institutions and 
internal progress of a people — its influence upon 
the great cause of Human Liberty, and its bear- 
ing upon the Rights of Man. I repeat, sir, once 
more : the " irrepressible conrffct" between Free- 
dom and Slavery has been forced upon us. The 
great questions of the present and the proximate 
future — and, mystify it as we may, deny it as we 
may, the only questions — are, Shall Slavery be 
nationalized 1 Shall it be an outspreading and 
progressive institution, marching forward, always 
under the protection of Federal law and shielded 
by the Stars and Stripes 1 Is there to be no 
limit to its expansion 1 Shall all the broad terri- 
tory of the Great West — territory large enough 
to make ten New Englands — territory reserved 
by the patriotism, the wisdom, the humanity of 
our fathers as an inheritance to the generations 
of freemen to come after them, consecrating it 
to free labor, free enterprise, and free institutions 
— be given over, through all time, to the blight 
and curse of Slavery 1 Shall the virgin richness 
of its soil be exhausted, its resources wasted, by 
the reckless culture of the bondman's toil 1 Shall 
free thought, free speech, free discussion, free 
enterprise, and a free press be banished from it 
forever? Shall this mad spirit of Slavery, that 
riots in misrule, that upheaves organic law and 
tramples upon the constitutional rights of free- 
men, go on spreading and expanding until there 
shall be no limit to its power 1 Shall the policy 
of this Government be shaped by Slaveiy, and 
controlled to the advancement of its interests and 
the expansion of its area? Sir, and Senators, 
what is your response to these pregnant ques- 
tions '? You must answer them, not by bravado, 
not by your silence, but by the expressive and 
practical language of conduct and action. Let 
no man deceive himself. The momentous issue 
between Freedom and Slavery must be settled 
now. Every other issue has been thrust out of 
the political arena, and this alone remains. Hu- 
man ingenuity can no longer shirk it — humau 
wisdom cannot postpone it. We have reached at 
last the parting of the ways, and must move on. 
There is no neutral ground — no middle path; 
and we cannot stand still. The pressure from 
behind impels us onward. We are accomplishing 
a work of destiny, and no human power can ab- 
solve us from the responsibility of action. All 
that is left us is to choose which course we will 
follow. On the one hand is the cause of fijeedom, 
free thought, free speech, free labor, free enter- 
prise, a free press free territory, and free insti- 
tutions ; and, on the other, slavery, with all its 
sequences of evil. Sir, and Senators, which path 
will you follow '? 

This issue, sir, has been forcing itself upon the 
country ever since the foundation of the govern- 
ment. The slave power has been steadily push- 
ing its way forward during all that period, and 
every step it has taken has been aggressive. It 



11 



rose up and "blustered, threatened dissolution 
and demanded compromise. The North, in it| 
love of peace and veneration for the Union, has 
always yielded, under the condition that each 
successive concession should be regarded as a 
finality — but scarcely has the ink become dry on 
the page upon which such concession has been 
written, when some new demand has been made, 
enforced in a spirit of haughty arrogance, and 
conceded by way of compromise by the North in 
its love of quiet. 

The ordinance of 1787 was a compromise. 
The Constitution itself was a compromise. The 
law of 1820, admitting Missouri, was a compro- 
mise. The conditions on which Texas was ad- 
mitted were a compromise. The laws of 1850, 
including the fugitive slave law, were a compro- 
mise. And each of these compromises was to 
be regarded as a finality. The Democracy, 
North and South, over and over again declared 
them such. The then li\ang but now dead Whig 
Party declared them such. Even the American 
Party, while it was strutting its little hour upon 
the stage, declared them such. And yet all these 
solemn compacts, all these compromises, wei-e 
ropes of sand in view of the slave power, to be 
broken, trampled upon, scattered to the winds, 
whenever its interests or its caprice demanded 
some new concession. 

The South by its solidarity, by making its pe- 
culiar institution the bond of its union, has an- 
nihilated or degraded every political party 
North and South. It annihilated the old Federal 
Party. It has, by its bids for support, utterly 
demoralized the Democratic Party, making it the 
Instrument of slavery propagandism, and nothing 
else. All its old landmarks have been removed. 
Its lofty principles and ennobling policy, initiated 
' by Jefierson and carried forward by his immedi- 
ate successors abandoned, and the name is ail 
that is left of that once glorious and patriotic 
organization. 

The Whig Party, sir, was a noble and a patri. 
otic party, reckoning among its supporters names 
deathless as history. Enticed into the service of 
slavery, it passed into dilapidation and decay. 
It " went down like some bright exhalation of 
the evening," and all that is left of it are a few 
solitary petrifactions, the fossil remains of a 
vanished era. 

The American Party, sir, was a noble and a 
patriotic party, growing up out of the chaos of 
the times, it had about it all the elements of 
strength and durability. It appealed to the 
pride of nationality, to the home instincts an^ 
sympathies of the American heart. In an ev' 
hour it leagued itself with slavery, and is alread/ 
reckoned among the things that have been, at 
belonging to history. All that is left of it are 
a few sad and solitary ghosts, wandering on this 
'^ide of the political Styx, with too little merit to 
'oe ferried across for nothing, and too poor to 
pay old Charon his penny for carrying them 
over. It glanced like a meteor across the politi- 
cal heavens, wherein it might have been fixed as 
a star. It vanished like a meteor into the dark- 
ness and was lost in the black shadow of slavery. 

And thus, sir, it has been. The spirit of 
slavery has destroyed the integrity and the 
power of every party in the Union. It utterly 
annihilated the old B'ederal Party — it broke the 
back of the Democracy — it paralyzed and de- 
stroyed the Whig Party — and it knocked the 



brains out of the American Party. It has been 
the bane of every political organization since the 
foundation of the government, and it will con- 
tinue to be such until it shall have been met face 
to face, and been struck one straightforward 
trenchant blow by the clenched fist and the 
strong arm of the North. 

Sir, they call us who resist the Encroachments 
of slavery, who would not surrender the control 
of this government into the hands, or permit its 
policy to be shaped by the slave power, who 
would save the broad territories of the mighty 
West from the blight and curse of slavery, sec- 
tional. And why ? Because we have taken our 
position on the side of freedom, and appealing 
to the traditions and axioms of the fathers, call 
upon the free men of the free States to sustain 
us in bringing the policy of the Union back to its 
ancient moorings. And who is responsible for 
this ? Who has driven us to this position ? The 
South demands an administration that will sus- 
tain by its influence and power the spread of 
slavery, that will throw open the territories to 
its advancement, and place federal arms in the 
hands of federal troops to enforce its propagand- 
ism. We have appealed to the South against the 
injustice of its course. We appealed to its sense 
of justice, to its appreciation of honor against 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and how 
have we been answered ? Let the outrages in the 
Senate Chamber, the rapine and plunder in Kan- 
sas, the burning of towns and the murder of 
citizens committed in that doomed Territory, 
justified by every Southern Senator and every 
Southern press ; the insult and outrage heaped 
upon citizens of free States while traveling in 
the South for lisping one word in favor of free- 
dom, the violation of private correspondence 
and official robbery of the mails, speak the na- 
ture of that response. What then was left to 
us but an appeal to the great heart of the fifteen 
millions of free people of the North ? But we 
did not, and we do not appeal to the North 
alone. We appeal to all men, to patiiots who 
love their country, to statesmen who would ad- 
vance its true interests and highest glory, to 
lovers of liberty everywhere, in all the States, 
and if our appeal is responded to only by the 
free men of the North, who is responsible for 
that? 

But, sir, is it true that the only test of nation- 
ality is to favor the extension of human slavery ? 
Is the spread of that institution, with all its se- 
quences of evil become the great leading feature 
of our national policy ? Are we bound by our 
national obligations to be the propagandists of a 
system which the whole world has denounced, 
which is at war with every principle of human 
rights, which in every attribute is the antipode 
of republican freedom, against all the teachings 
of Christi.an civilization and all the axioms of an 
enlightened philanthropy ? Sir, this is the 
logical sequence, if to oppose the extension of 
Slavery is sectional and not national. Sir, this 
charge of sectionalism in the mouths of our op- 
ponents is an insult to the intelligence of the 
age. It is more. It is a hypocritical and cant- 
ing subterfuge. It is the cry of the fugitive, of 
stop thief, while he runs away with his plunder. 
Sir, this device has come to be understood. 
The people have studied into the matter, and at 
last have comprehended the great fact, that until 
the whole philosophy of our system of govern- 



12 



inent, tlie whole theory and superstructure of 
our institutions shall be changed, until right and 
•wrong shall change places in the vocabuhuy of 
the world, freedom can never be sectional. Its 
principles are universal^ and should prevail 
wherever human government or human fate pre- 
vails. Sir, tell me when the Southern States, 
on any question involving however remotely 
the interests of Slavery, liave failed to stand to- 
gether, making their peculiar institutions a bond 
of political union ? An instance of their being 
divided on such an issue has not yet been recorded 
in history. And it is their solidarity that gives 
gives them power. What is the spectacle that has 
been presented during the last two months at 
Waslilngton ? The Southern States standing to- 
gether, an iron phalanx, resisting as one man, in 
factious opposition, the organization of the House, 
and they stood thus for more than eight weeks, 
and why ? Because the representatives of the 
15,000,000 of the North will not bow down and 
worship at the shrine of Slavery. Sir, there is but 
one sentiment pervading all the South, a senti- 
ment intensely sectional, beginning and ending 
at the South — that holds the South in unity, and 
precipitates the Southern States in a body into 
the political arena, and that sentiment is the ex- 
tension of Slavery, Who then are the section- 
alists, and who is responsible, if the North, fol- 
lowing the example thus set, and impelled by 
necessities growing out of inevitable and ever- 
lasting antagonisms shall stand together for free- 
dom, making the extension of free institutions, 
the promotion of the interests of free enterprise 
and free labor the bond of their union ? 

Sir, the^e are inequalities enough, evils 
enough existing already under the Constitu- 
tion, without extending them by enlarging the 
area of slavery. You will see, sir, by looking 
over the map of this country, that the territoiy 
now organized into States, contains in round 
numbers 1,400,000 square miles, and of this 
slarevy has possession of 800,000, and freedom 
of 600,000, These 800,000 square miles are 
peopled by about 7,000,000 of free white men ; 
and the 600,a00 are peopled by about 15,000,000 
of free white men. Sir, there is something due 
to the posterity of the^e 15,000,000 of free, white, 
working men of this country. The 7,000,000 of 
the south have possession of one-third more 
territory than the 15,000,000 of the north ; and 
is there a lack of nationality in insisting, that 
tliese 15,000 000 will not rob their posterity of 
land, and labor, and freedom, and republican 
equality, that slavery may be extended? 

The 15,000,000 of the north are represented in 
Congress by 176 representatives. The 7,000,000 
by 120, Equality of representation would give 
the free North more than double the representa- 
tives of the South, whereas we now lack sixty- 
four of that number. And why ? Because, by 
the compromises made when the Constitution 
was framed, it was agreed, that one free, white 
man, who owned five slaves at the South, should 
equal in representation four free men of the 
North, who owned none. Such are the inequali 
ties already existing under the Constitution, and 
while I denounce them as a fraud and an out^ 
rage upon the North, yet they are in the Consti- 
tution, and I am content that they should remain 
there. 

But, sir, it is not the 7,000,000 of the slave 
states who are clamoring for an extension of 



y slavery. They have not corrupted the adminia. 
tration ; they have not degraded and suborn td 
the democracy. They have not prostitu<^^ed and 
destroyed Americanism. They did not annihi- 
late the Whig Party. This, sir, was the work 
of the 350,000 slaveholders. The people of the 
South are not responsible for the outrages per- 
petrated in Washington; the outrages upon 
Northern citizens in the Southern States, or the 
still more gigantic outrages perpetrated in Kan- 
sas. These again, sir, are the work of the 
350,000 slaveholders of the south, who subsist 
upon the fruits of the bondmen's toil. They 
have sons for the army and navy, for clerks in 
the public offices, for marshals, for the customs, 
and the petty offices of the government. They 
can fill foreign missions and consulates and 
home departments, the secretaryships and the 
judgeships ; and it is the possession of these 
that stimulates their nationality. They are not 
geographically sectional. They will vote for a 
Northern man, provided his face is plastic, and 
his principles are Southern, and provided he 
will give the South — and that means them — a 
monopoly of official spoils. These 350,000 slave- 
holders control the politics of the South, a.nd 
they market their influence wherever it will 
bring the highest prce. 

And now, sir, I repeat once more, that we are 
in the midst of this irrepressible conflict between 
Freedom and Slavery, and that the South stands 
as a solid phalanx in favor of Slavery — that we 
j of the North must take position — we cannot re- 
i main neutral — the ways part here, and we must 
take the right hand or the left. Sir, we are told 
that this Union will be dissolved if a Republican 
President shall, in accordance with the Constitu- 
tional forms, be elected in 1860. This announce- 
ment has been made in high quarters. South- 
! ern Democrats have made it in the Federal 
I Senate, and Northern Democrats utter no word 
I of dissent or rebuke. Southern Democrats make 
it every day in the House of Representatives, 
and Northern Democracy echoes the traitorous 
threat. Sir, shall vs^e give up our organization 1 
shall we dissolve our party ? shall we bow our 
heads in humility, and in accents of submission, 
cry '■^ pecco.vi! culpa mea! culpa mea ! peccavi P^ 
or shall we stand up, in the courage and patriot- 
ism of our manho^xl, and meet these traitors 
and conspirators against the Union with a calm 
and stern defiance 7 

But, sir, this threat of dissolution is an idle 
tale with which to frighten children. If it shall 
intimidate the 15,000,000 of the Free North now, 
then are they irreclaimable cowards, and deserve 
all the outrage heaped upon them. Sir, if dan- 
ger there be to the Union, it is not in the election 
of a Republican President, but in his defeat — 
not, sir, in the unity of the North, but in its di- 
visions — not in the triumph of Freedom, but in 
the triumph of Slavery. Sir, look back over the 
past and see how this controversy has been grow- 
ing for decades — how contention on this Slavery 
issue has been rising higher and higher, and dis- 
cussion waxing fiercer and fiercer every year. The 
15,000,000 of the north are aroused to the assertion 
of their rights. They have forborne the exercise of 
the power vested by the Constitution in the might 
of majorities, till their forbearance has reached 
the boundary of virtue. They are content that 
Slavery sliall remain in safety where it now is — 
they are content that it shall i^epose in security 



13 



and are ready to protect it •within the States — but 
the}^ have resolved that it shall go no further. 
This controversy can be settled now, but the Ter- 
ritories and future States must be free. They 
have seen the Missouri Compromise swept away, 
but they have resolved that Slavery shall gain 
nothing by that outrage. Stay its progress now, 
go back to the spirit of ancient compacts — let it 
be settled now and forever that Slavery shall 
never travel beyond the line of 36.30 — that there 
shall be no more acquisition of Slave Territory. 
whether by conquest or purchase, and contention 
will cease, agitation will be hushed, excitement 
will die away and fraternal feeling will take the 
place of sectional hates. The South will acqui- 
esce because such a settlement will be just, and 
the north will be content because it was "so 
nominated in the bond." 

But, sir, let the solidarity of the South, aided 
by a truckling and craven spirit at the North, 
give to Slavery a triumph now ; let it go out that 
the policy of this Government, its great object 
and mission, is to foster and extend slavery ; that 
that institution is to be nationalized ; and this 
excitement on the subject of slavery will become 
a consuming fire. The fifteen millions of the 
free North will throw away the scabbard from the 
sword they have drawn, and its keen edge will 
be applied with a relentless purpose. They are 
not abolitionists now ; but the conservative spirit 
that holds them in check has a limit to its forbear- 
ance. Their war with slavery is one of self-de- 
fence; but if slavery shall triumph now, it will 
become one of aggression, and you and I, no 
earthly power, can prevent it. We are drifting, 
sir, upon the current of a destiny, under a higher 
direction than mere human agencies ; and depre- 
cate it as we may, struggle as we may, tremble 
as we may in view of the rapids towards which 
we may seem to be drifting, we are borne on- 
wards by its resistless sweep. 

You will remeniber that this conflict is not be- 
tween opposing factions. It is not a strife of per- 
sonal ambition. It is not a war of the Pigmies. 
It is a war of the Giants. It is a conflict of prin- 
ciple, involving the great interests of humanity ; 
between progress and retrogression ; between 
right and wrong ; and in such a conflict, when 
fairly begun, the weaker will go to the wall. 
Give to Slavery a triumph now, and the.^e fifteen 
millions of freemen will exert the constitutional 
power vested in the might of majorities, and no 
human power can prevent them. They will at- 
tack Slavery in its strongholds. They will attack 
it in the District of Columbia, and sweep it away. 
They will attack the slave trade between the 
States, and its annihilation will follow. They 
will repeal the Fugitive Slave Law. They will 
drive Slavery from the Federal Courts by the 
enactment of a Federal law that man can hold 
no property in man. They will attack the Con- 
stitution itself, Tiot by disregarding its sanctions, 
but by demanding its amendment, so as to de- 
stroy the inequality of representation and mak- 
ing the President elective by the whole people 
and by a direct vote. Such, sir, is the Phoenix 
that I see rising out of the ashes of the Republi- 
can Party — such the warfare that I see looming 
up beyond its defeat; and when that warfare 
shall have begun, then, sir, the Union will indeed 
be in danger, and its dissolution may be counted 
upon as among the eventual! ti£s of a proximate 
future. 



The danger, then, I repeat, is in the defeat and 
not in the success of the princi[)les which under- 
lie the Republican Party, That party, sir, is the 
only truly conservative party, the only party 
under whose control this Union is or can be safe. 
It stands between Southern extremists, the pro- 
slavery fanaticism, the mad secessionists of the 
south, and the wild and frenzied abolitionism, 
the anti-slavery fanaticism of the North. It 
grasps these world-wide but destructive antago- 
nisms in either hand, and restrains their frantic 
rage. Does not its success, therefore, appeal to 
the patriotism, the love for the Union, of every 
American heart ? 

But, sir, if the election of a Republican Presi- 
dent, achieved through constitutional means, 
will dissolve this Union — if the vindication of 
free speech, free enterprise, free labor, free terri- 
tory, and free institutions, will break the bands 
that hold these States together — then, sir, the 
Union," this Confederation, the Constitution, the 
Declaration of Independence, and all our boasted 
institutions, are a gigantic fraud, a stupendous 
cheat, and a lie. 

Sir, I have no fears that the election of a Re- 
publican President will dissolve the Union. If I 
til ought it would — —sir, shall I go on ? I may 
speak treason if I do. Sir, I love this Union. 
It is a glorious compact, full of destiny to the 
generations who are to come after us. Its inte- 
grity, its perpetuity, is of momentous import to 
the far ofi" future of the whole world. It involves 
everything conducive to the advancement of hu- 
man freedom, everything auxiliary to human 
progress, everything of interest to the great cause 
of Christian civilization. If it were to perish 
now, the idea of self-government, of Republican 
freedom might well become obsolete. If our 
great experiment should fail, the hope of free- 
dom for the oppressed of other lands might well 
be surrendered in despair. 

But, sir, much as I love and venerate the 
Union, vast as are the interests that cluster 
around its perpetuity, and mighty as would be 
the sequence of its dissolution — yet, sir, rather 
than see slavery nationalized — rather than see it 
march forward into territory consecrated to fi-ee- 
dom — rather than see it break away from the 
State sovereignties and become an outspreading 
and progressive institution, protected and fostered 
by the Federal power — rather than that the ex- 
tension of its area and the protection of its inte- 
rests should become the leading feature of our 
national policy — I say, sir, let this Union be dis- 
solved. Let slavery take its portion, and be 
separate. Let the Southern States hug to their 
bosoms their cherished institution, until they 
perish in the folds of the serpent they liave 
nourished. But let the free North be sinless. 
Let them stand apart from the gigantic wrong, 
the Heaven daring wickedness of slavery, and 
escape the curse of God, written all over history, 
denouncing retribution and woe against the na- 
tions that rob the defenceless or oppress the 
poor. 

Sir, this Union cannot be dissolved. Let no 
man suppose that dissolution can be accom- 
plished, short of the carnage, and chaos of revolu- 
tion, and beyond which are the blasting hoii-ors 
of a servile war. Sir, the great conservative 
States of the North, will never consent to dis- 
union. Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, 
will never consent to it. New England will 



14 



never consent to it. The young, loyal States 
of the West, will nevei- consent to it; Thes* 
States, sir, will save the Union from dissolu- 
tion, They will save the South from itself— 
the slave States from their own madness and 
folly. They will not leave the South to tha 
horrors of a war of the races, that will surely 
follow the breaking down of this Confederation. 
I repeat, sir, this Union cannot be dissolved. 
New York is a great State — the greatest in this 
Confederrtion of States ; greatest in population ; 
greatest in commerce ; greatest in wealth ; great- 
est in resources, and second to none in the pa- 
triotism of her people. New York is a loyai 
State, loyal to the Constitution, loyal to the 
Union, and the fundamental principles which lie 
at the foundations of our republican institutions. 
She is a conservative State — not that conserva- 
tism which nestles among bales of cotton, oi 
burrows in hogsheads of sugar. It is not the 
conservatism of cowardice that trembles^ at the 
frown, or yields to the menaces of madmeii North 
or South. Hers is the conservatism of princi- 



ple, the conservatism of justice and right ; the 
conservatism that is true to itself, that will 
neither do nor suffer wrong. New York, sir, 
knows her strength. She can afford to be mag- 
nanimous. She is content to be forbearing ; 
but she will bide her time. While peace 
reigns, she will keep bright the chain that en- 
circles the Union. She will brush away with 
a gentle hand, the clouds of prejudice. 
She will whisper down the voice of con- 
tention. Where strife is, she will interpose 
conciliation, and like an elder sister, watchful of 
the honor of those weaker and younger than 
herself, she will lead these States onward to a 
brighter glory, and more enduring renown. But, 
sir, in the hour of danger, whether from foes 
without or traitors v/ithin, when the tempest 
shall come, and the institutions of our country 
shall rock and reel upon their deep foundations, 
then will New York, by the giant power of her 
strength, hold this Union firm upon its basis, and 
safe, amid the earthquake and the storm. 



THE 

EEPUBLICAN PLATFOEM. 



Resolved^ That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the 
United States, in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our con- 
stituents and our country, unite in the following declarations : 

1. That the history of the nation during the last four years has fully established the 
propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, 
and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and 
now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. 

2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and embodied in the Federal Constitution — "That all men are created equal; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these rights, govern- 
ments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed" — is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions ; and that the 
Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and 
shall be preserved. • 

3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in 
population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of 
wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad, and we hold in abhorrence all 
schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may : and we congratulate the 
country that no Republican Member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the 
threats of Disunion so often made by Democratic Members, without rebuke and with 
applause from their political associates ; and we denounce those threats of Disunion, in 
case of a popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles of a 
free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason which it is the imperative 
duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence. 

4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the 
right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its 
own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfec- 
tion and endurance of our political fabric depends ; and we denounce the lawless invasion 
by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as 
among the gravest of crimes. 

5. That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our w^orst apprehen- 
sions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially 
evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon 
the protesting people of Kansas ; in construing the personal relation between master 
and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons ; in its attempted enforcement, 
everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal 
Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest ; and in its general and 
unvarying abuse of the power entrusted to it by a confiding people. 

6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades 
every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and 
accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by 
favored partisans ; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at 
the Federal Metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively 
demanded. 

7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into 
any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at 



variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with cotemporaneous 
exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent ; is revolutionary in its tendency, 
and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. 

8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of free- 
dom ; that, as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national 
territory, ordained that " no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property with- 
out due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation 
is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to vio- 
late it ; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any 
individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. 

9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of 
our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity 
and a burning shame to our country and age ; and we call upon Congress to take prompt 
and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. 

10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the Legisla- 
tures of Kansas and Nebraska prohibiting slavery in those Territories, we find a practi- 
cal illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-intervention and Popular 
Sovereignty embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstration of the decep- 
tion and fraud involved therein. 

11. That Kansas should, of right, be immediately admitted as a State under the 
Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House 
of Representatives. 

12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by 
duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to 
encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country ; and we 
commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal 
wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate 
reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation coiSmercial prosperity and 
independence. 

13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by 
actual settlers, and against any view of the Free Homestead policy which regards the 
settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty ; and we demand the passage by Con- 
gress of the complete and satisfactory Homestead measure which has already passed the 
House. 

14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our Naturalization Laws 
or any State legislation by which the rights of citizenship hitherto accorded to immi- 
grants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired ; and in favor of giving a full 
and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or natural- 
ized, both at home and abroad. 

15. That appropriations by Congress for River and Harbor improvements of a national 
character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are 
authorized by the Constitution and justified by the obligation of Government to protect 
the lives and property of its citizens. 

16. That a Railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests 
of the whole country ; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and 
efficient aid in its construction ; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily Overland Mail 
should be promptly established. 

17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the 
co-operation of all citizens, however difi'ering on other questions, who substantially agree 
with us in their affirmance and support. 



SUPPLEMENTARY RESOLUTION. 



Resolved^ That we deeply s}nnpathize with those men who have been driven, some 
from their native States and others from the States of their adoption, and are now exiled 
from their homes on account of their opinions; and we hold the Democratic party, 
responsible for this gross violation of that clause of the Constitution which declares that 
the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citi- 
zens in the several States. 

Adopted at Chicago, May 17, 1860. 



EVENING JOTJRNAL TRACTS.-No. 5. 



l^ATioi^AL Politics 



SPEECH 



OP 



ABEAHAM LINCOLN, 



OF ILLINOIS. 



Delivered at the Cooper Institute, Monday, February 27, 1860. 



Mr. President and Fellow-Citizens of New 
York : The facts with wliich I shall deal this 
evening are mainly old and familiar; nor is 
there anything new in the general use I shall 
make of them. If there shall be any novelty, 
it will be in the mode of presenting the facts, 
and the inferences and observations following 
that presentation. 

In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, 
as reported in " The New York Times," Sena- 
tor Douglas said : 

" Our fathers, when they framed the Gov- 
ernment under which we live, understood this 
question just as well, and even better, than we 
do now." 

I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text 
for this discourse. I so adopt it because it 
ftimishes a precise and an agreed starting point 
for a discussion between RepubUcans and that 
wing of Democracy headed by Senator Doug- 
las. It simply leaves the inquiry: "What 
was the understanding those fathers had of the 
question mentioned?" 

What is the frame of Government under 
which we live ? 

The answer must be : " The Constitution of 
the United States." That Constitution con- 
sists of the original, framed in 1787 (and under 
which the present Government first went into 
operation), and twelve subsequently framed 



amendments, the first ten of which were 
framed in 1789. 

Who were our fathers that framed the Con- 
stitution? I suppose the "thirty-nine" who 
signed the original instrument may be fairly 
called our fathers who framed that part of the 
present Government. It is almost exactly true 
to say they framed it, and it is altogether true 
to say they fairly represented the opinion and 
sentiment of the whole nation at the time. 
Their names -being familiar to nearly all, and 
accessible to quite all, need not now be re- 
peated. 

I take these " thirty-nine," for the present, 
as being " our fathers who framed the Govern- 
ment under which we live." 

What is the question which, according to 
the text, those fathers understood just as well, 
and even better than we do now ? . 

It is this : Does the proper division of local 
from federal authority, or anything in the Con- 
stitution, forbid our Federal Government to 
control as to slavery in our Federal Territories ? 

Upon this, Douglas holds the affirmative, and 
Repubhcans the negative. This afi&rmativ« 
and denial form an issue ; and this issue — the 
question — ^is precisely what the text declares 
our fathers understood better than we. 

Let us now inquire whether the "thirty- 
nine," or any of them, ever acted upon this 



OR Sale at the Office of the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Single Copy, 2a ; 
PER Dozen Copies, 20c. ; per Hundred, $1 ; per Thousand, $8. 



2 



question ; and if they did, how they acted up- 
on it — ^how they expressed that better under- 
standing. 

In 1784 — three years before the Constitu- 
tion — the United States then owning the 
Northwestern Territory, and no other — the 
Congress of the Confederation had before them 
the question of prohibiting slavery in that 
Territory ; and four of the " thirty-nine " who 
afterward framed the Constitution were in that 
Congress, and voted on that question. Of 
these, Roger Sherman, Thomas Mifflin, and 
Hugh Williamson voted for the prohibition — 
thus showing that, in their understanding, no 
line dividing local from federal authority, nor 
anything else, properly forbade the Federal 
Government to control as to slavery in federal 
territory. The other of the four — James 
McHenry — voted against the prohibition, 
showing that, for some cause, he thought it 
improper to vote for it. 

In 1787, still before the Constitution, but 
while the Convention was in session framing 
it, and while the Northwestern Territory still 
was the only territory owned by the United 
States — ^the same question of prohibiting sla- 
very in the territory again came before the 
Congress of the Confederation ; and three more 
of the " thirty-nine " who afterward signed the 
Constitution, were in that Congress, and voted 
on the question. They were William Blount, 
Wilham Few and Abraham Baldwin ; and they 
all voted for the prohibition — thus showing 
ihat, in their understanding, no line dividing 
local from federal authority, nor anything else, 
properly forbids the Federal Government to 
control as to slavery in federal territory. This 
time the prohibition became a law^ being part 
of what ie now well known as the Ordinance 
of '87. 

The question of federal control of slavery in 
the territories, seems not to have been directly 
before the Convention which framed the origi- 
nal Constitution ; and hence it is not recorded 
that the " thirty-nine " or any of them, while 
engaged on that instrument, expressed any 
opinion on that precise question. 

In 1789, by the first Congress which sat un- 
der the Constitution, an act was passed to en- 
force the Ordinance of '87, including the pro- 
hibition of slavery in the Northwestern Terri- 
tory. The bill for this act was reported by one 
of the "thirty-nine," Thomas Fitzsimmons, 



then a member of the House of Eepresenta- 
tives from Pennsylvania. It went through all 
its stages without a word of opposition, and 
finally passed both branches without yeas and 
nays, which is equivalent to an unanimous pas- 
sage. In this Congress there were sixteen of 
the " thirty-nine " fathers who framed the orig- 
inal Constitution. They were John Langdon, 
Nicholas Gilman, Wm. S. Johnson, Roger Sher- 
man, Robert Morris, Thos. Fitzsimmons, 'Wil- 
liam Few, Abraham Baldwin, Rufus King, 
William Patterson, George Clymer, Richard 
Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel 
Carroll, James Madison. 

This shows that, in their understanding, no 
line dividing local from federal authority, nor 
anything in the Constitution, properly forbade 
Congress to prohibit slavery in the federal ter- 
ritory ; else both their fidelity to correct princi- 
ple, and their oath to support the Constitution, 
would have constrained them to oppose the 
prohibition. 

Again, George Washington, another of the 
" thirty-nine," was then President of the Uni- 
ted States, and, as such, approved and signed 
the bill, thus completing its validity as a law, 
and thus showing that, in his understanding, 
no line dividing local from federal authority, 
nor anything in the* Constitution, forbade the 
Federal Government, to control as to slavery 
in federal territory. 

No gi'eat while after the adoption of the 
original Constitution, North Carolina ceded to 
the Federal Government the country now con- 
stituting the State of Tennessee; and a few 
years later Georgia ceded that which now con- 
stitutes the States of Mississippi and Alabama. 
In both deeds of cession it was made a condi- 
tion by the ceding States that the Federal 
Government should not prohibit slavery in the 
ceded country. Besides this, slavery was then 
actually in the ceded country. Under these 
circumstances. Congress, on taking charge of 
these countries, did not absolutely prohibit sla- 
very within them. But they did interfere 
with it — take control of it — even there, to a 
certain extent. In 1798, Congress organized 
the Territory of Mississippi. In the act of 
organization they prohibited the bringing of 
slaves into the Territory, from any place with- 
out the United States, by fine, and giving 
freedom to slaves so brought. This act 
passed both branches of Congress without 



3 



yeas and nays. In that Congress were three 
of the " thirty-nme " who framed the original 
Constitution. They were John Langdon, 
George Reed and Abraham Baldwin. They 
all, probably, voted for it. Certainly they 
would have placed their opposition to it upon 
record, if, in their understanding, any line di- 
viding local from federal authority, or anything 
in the Constitution, properly forbade the Fede- 
ral Grovernment to control as to slavery in 
federal territory. 

In 1803, the Federal Grovernment purchased 
the Louisiana country. Our former territorial 
acquisitions came from certain of our own 
States; but this Louisiana country was ac- 
quired from a foreign nation. In 1804, Con- 
gress gave a territorial organization to that 
part of it which now constitutes the State of 
Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that 
part, was an old and comparatively large city. 
There were other considerable towns and set- 
tlements, and slavery was extensively and 
thoroughly intermingled with the people. 
Congress did not, in the Territorial Act, pro- 
hibit slavery ; but they did interfere with it — 
take control of it — in a more marked and 
extensive way than they did in the case of 
Mississippi. The substance of the provision 
therein made, in relation to slaves, was : 

First. That no slave should be imported into 
the territory from foreign parts. 

Second. That no slave should be carried into 
it who had been imported into the United 
States since the first day of May, 1798. 

Third, That no slave should be carried into 
it, except by the owner, and for his own use 
as a settler ; the penalty in all the cases being a 
fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom 
to the slave. 

This act also was passed without yeas and 
nays. In the Congress which passed it, there 
were two of the " thirty-nine." They were 
Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As 
stated in the case of Mississippi, it is probable 
they both voted for it. They would not have 
allowed it to pass without recording their op- 
position to it, if, in their understanding, it vio- 
lated either the line proper dividing local from 
federal authority or any provision of the Con- 
stitution. 

In 1819-20, came and passed the Missouri 
question. Many votes were taken, by yeas 
and nays, in both branches of Congress, upon 



the various phases of the general question. 
Two of the "thirty-nine" — Rufus King and 
Charles Pinckney — were members of that 
Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery 
prohibition and against all compromises, while 
Mr. Pinckney as steadily voted against slavery 
prohibition and against all compromises. By 
this Mr. King showed that, in his understand- 
ing, no line dividing local from federal authori- 
ty, nor anything in the Constitution, was vio- 
lated by Congress prohibiting slavery in federal 
territory ; while Mr. Pinckney, by his votes, 
showed that in his understanding there was 
some sufficient reason for opposing such prohi- 
bition in that case. 

The cases I have mentioned are the only 
acts of the " thirty-nine," or of any of them, 
upon the direct issue, which I have been able 
to discover. 

To enumerate the persons who thus acted, 
as being four in 1784, three in 1787, seventeen 
in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, and two in 
1819-20 — there would be thirty-one of them. 
But this would be counting John Langdon, 
Roger Sherman, William Few, Rufus King, 
and George Read, each twice, and Abraham 
Baldwin four times. The true number of 
those of the "thirty-nine" whom I have shown 
to have acted upon the question, which, by 
the text, they understood better than we, is 
twenty-three, leaving sixteen not shown to 
have acted upon it in any way. 

Here, then, we have twenty-three out of 
our "thirty-nine" fathers who framed the Gov- 
ernment under which we live, who have, upon 
their official responsibility and their corporal 
oaths, acted upon the very question which the 
text affirms they " understood just as well, and 
even better than we do now ;" and twenty- 
one of them — a clear majority of the whole 
" thirty-nine " — so acting upon it as to make 
them guilty of gross political impropriety, and 
willful perjury, if, in their understanding, any 
proper division between local and federal 
authority, or anything in the Constitution they 
had made themselves, and sworn to support, 
forbade the Federal Government to control as 
to slavery in the federal territories. Thus the 
twenty-one acted ; and, as actions speak louder 
than words, so actions under such responsi- 
bility speak still louder. 

Two of the twenty-three voted against Con- 
gressional prohibition of slavery in the federal 
territories, in the instances in which they 



acted upon the question. But for what rea- 
sons they so voted is not known. They may 
have done so because they thought a proper 
division of local from federal authority, or 
some provision or principle of the Constitution 
stood in the way ; or they may, without any 
such question, have voted against the prohi- 
bition, o.n what appeared to them to be suffi- 
cient grounds of expediency. IsTo one who 
has sworn to support the Constitution, can 
conscientiously vote for what he understands 
to be an unconstitutional measure, however 
expedient he may think it; but one may and 
ought to vote against a measure which he 
deems constitutional, if, at the same time, he 
deems it inexpedient. It, therefore, would be 
unsafe to set down even the two who voted 
against the prohibition, as having done so be- 
cause, in their understanding any proper di- 
vision of local from federal authority, or any- 
thing in the Constitution, forbade the Federal 
Grovernment to control as to slavery in federal 
territory. 

The remaining sixteen of the " thirty-nine," 
so far as I have discovered, have left no record 
of their understanding upon the direct ques- 
tion of federal control of slavery in the fede- 
ral territories. But there is much reason to 
believe that their understanding upon that 
question would not have appeared different 
from that of their twenty-three compeers, had 
it been manifested at all. 

•For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the 
text, I have purposely omitted whatever un- 
derstanding may have been manifested, by 
any person, however distinguished, other tha-n 
the thirty-nine fathers who framed the original 
Constitution ; and, for the same reason, I have 
also omitted whatever understanding may 
have been manifested by any of the "thirty- 
nine " even, on any other phase of the general 
question of slavery. If we should look into 
■their acts and declarations on those other 
,phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the 
morality and pohcy of slavery generally, it 
would appear to us that on the direct question 
of federal control of slavery in federal territo- 
ries, the sixteen, if they had acted at all, 
would probably have acted just as the twenty- 
three did. Among that sixteen were several 
of the most noted anti-slavery men of those 
limes — as Dr. Franklin, Alexander Hamilton 
and Gouverneur Morris — ^while there was not 
one now known to have been otherwise, un- 



less it may be John Eutledge, of South Caro- 
lina. 

The sum of the whole is, that of our "thirty- 
nine" fathers who framed the original Consti- 
tution, twenty-one — a clear majority of the 
whole — certainly understood that no proper 
division of local from federal authority, nor 
any part of the Constitution, forbade the Fede- 
ral Government to control slavery in the fede- 
ral territories; while all the rest probably had 
the same understanding. Such, unquestion- 
ably, Avas the understanding of our fathers 
who framed the oiiginal Constitution; and the 
text affirms that they understood the question 
better than we. 

But, so far, I have been considering the un- 
derstanding of the question manifested by the 
framers of the original Constitution. In and 
by the original instrument, a mode was pro- 
vided for amending it ; and as I have already 
stated, the present frame of Government under 
which we live consists of that original, and 
twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted 
since. Those who now insist that federal con- 
trol of slavery in federal territories violates 
the Constitution, point us to the provisions 
which they suppose it thus violates ; and, as I 
understand, they all fix upon provisions in 
these amendatory articles, and not in the 
original instrument. The Supreme Court, in 
the Dred Scott case, plant themselves upon 
the fifth amendment, which provides that "no 
person shall be deprived of property without 
due process of law;" while Senator Douglas 
and his peculiar adherents plant themselves 
upon the tenth amendment, providing that 
" the powers not granted by the Constitution 
are reserved to the States respectively, and to 
the people." 

Now, it so happens that these amendments 
v.^ere framed by the first Congress which sat 
under the Constitution — the identical Congress 
which passed the act already mentioned, en- 
forcing the prohibition of slavery in the north- 
western territory. Not only was it the same 
Congress, but they were the identical, same 
individual men who, at the same session, and 
at the same time within the session, had under 
consideration, and in progress toward maturity, 
these constitutional am^endments, and this act 
prohibiting slavery in all the territory the na- 
tion then owned. The Constitutional amend- 
ments were introduced before, and passed after 
the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87 ; so that 



during the whole pendency of the act to 
enforce the Ordinance, the Constitutional 
amendments were also pending. 

That Congress, consisting in all of seventy- 
six members, including sixteen of the framers 
of the original Constitution, as before stated, 
were pre-eminently our fathers who framed 
that part of the Government under which we 
live, which is now claimed as forbidding the 
Federal G-overnment to control slavery in the 
Federal territories. 

Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at 
this day to afiirm that the two things which 
that Congress deliberately framed, and carried 
to maturity at the same time, are absolutely 
inconsistent with each other ? And does not 
such affirmation become impudently absurd 
when coupled with the other affirmation, from 
the same mouth, that those who did the two 
things alleged to be inconsistent understood 
whether they really were inconsistent better 
than we — better than he who affirms that they 
are inconsistent? 

It is surely safe to assume that the "■ thirty- 
nine" framers of the original Constitution, and 
the seventy-six members of the Congress wdiich 
framed the amendments thereto, taken toge- 
ther, do certainly include those who may be 
fairly called " our fathers who framed the Go- 
vernment under which we live." And so 
assuming, I defy any man to show that any 
one of them ever, in his whole life, declared 
that, in his understanding, any proper division 
of local from federal authority, or any part of 
the Constitution, forbade the Federal Govern- 
ment to control as to slavery in the federal ter- 
ritories. I go a step further. I defy any one 
to show that any living man in the whole 
world ever did, prior to the beginning of the 
present century (and I might almost say prior 
to the beginning of the last half of the present 
century), declare that, in his understanding, any 
proper division of local from federal authority, 
or any part of the Constitution, forbade the 
Federal Government to control as to slavery in 
the federal territories. To those who now so 
declare, I give, not only "our fathers who 
framed the Government under which we live," 
but with them all other living men within the 
century in which it was framed, among whom 
to search, and they shall not be able to find the 
evidence of a single man agreeing with them. 
Now, and here, let me guard a little against 
Joeing misunderstood. I do not mean to say 



wc are l-.or.nd to follow implicitly in whatever 
our fathers did. To do so, would be to discard 
all the lights of current experience — to reject 
all progress — all improvement. What I do say 
is, that if we would supplant the opinions and 
policy of our fathers in any case, we should do 
so upon evidence so conclusive, and argument 
so clear, that even their great authority, fairly 
considered and weighed, cannotstand ; and most 
surely not in a case whereof we ourselves declare 
they understood the question better than we. 

If any man, at this day, sincerely believes 
that a proper division of local from federal au- 
thority, or any part of the Constitution, forbids 
the Federal Government to control as to slave- 
ry in the federal territories, he is right to say 
so, and to enforce his position by all truthful 
evidence and fair argument w^hich he can. But 
he has no right to mislead others, who have 
less access to history and less leisure to study 
it, into the false belief that " our fathers, who 
framed the Government under which w^e Hve," 
Avere of the same opinion — thus substituting 
falsehood and deception for truthful evidence 
and fair argument. If any man at this day shi- 
cerely believes " our fathers who framed the 
Government under which we live," used and 
applied principles, in other cases, which ought 
to have led them to understand that a proper 
division of local from federal authority or somes 
part of the Constitution, forbids the Federal 
Government to control as to slavery in the fede- 
ral territories, he is right to say so. But he 
should, at the same time, brave the responsibil- 
it}^ of declaring that, in his opinion, he under- 
stands their principles better than they did 
themselves ; and especially should he not shirk 
that responsibility by asserting that they " un- 
derstood the question just as well, and even 
better, than we do now." 

But enough. Let all who believe that " our 
fathers, who framed the Government under 
which we live, understood this question just as 
well, and even better than we do now," speak 
as they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. 
This is all Republicans ask — all Republicans 
desire — in relation to slavery. As those fathers 
marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil 
not to be extended, but to be tolerated and 
protected only because of and so far as its ac- 
tual presence among us makes that toleration 
and protection a necessity. Let all the guar- 
anties those fathers gave it, be, not grudgingly, 
but fully and fairly, maintained. For this Re- 



6 



publicans contend, and with this, so far as I 
inow or beheve, they will be content. 

And now, if they would listen- — as I suppose 
they will not — I would address a few words to 
the southern people. 

I would say to them : You consider your- 
selves a reasonable and a just people ; and I con- 
sider that in the general qualities of reason and 
justice you are not inferior to any other people. 
Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do 
so only to denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best 
as no better than outlaws. You will grant a 
hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing like 
it to " Black Republicans." In all your conten- 
tions with one another, each of you deems an 
unconditional condemnation of " Black Repub- 
hcanism" as the first thing to be attended to. 
Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be 
an indispensable pre-requisite — ^license, so to 
speak — among you to be admitted or permitted 
to speak at all. Now can you, or not, be pre- 
vailed upon to pause and to consider whether 
this is quite just to us, or even to yourselves? 

Bring forward your charges and specifica- 
tions, and then be patient long enough to hear 
us deny or justify. 

You say we are sectional. We deny it. That 
makes an issue ; and the burden of proof is upon 
you. You produce your proof; and what is it ? 
Why, that our party has no existence in your 
section — gets no votes in your section. The 
fact is substantially true ; but does it prove the 
issue ? If it does, then in case we should, with- 
out change of principle, begin to get votes in 
your section, we should thereby cease to be 
sectional. You cannot escape this conclusion ; 
and yet, are you wilHng to abide by it ? If you 
are, you will probably soon find that we have 
ceased to be sectional, for we shall get votes in 
your section this very year. You will then be- 
gin to discover, as the truth plainly is, that your 
proof does not touch the issue. The fact that 
we get no votes in your section is a fact of your 
making, and not of ours. And if there be fault in 
that fact, that fault is primarily yours, and remains 
so until you show that we repel you by some 
wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you 
by any wrong principle or practice, the fault is 
ours : but this brings you to where you ought 
to have started — to a discussion of the right or 
wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in 
■practice, would wrong your section for the be- 
nefit of ours, or for any other object, then our 
;principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are 



justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet 
us, then, on the question of whether our princi- 
ple, put in practice, would wrong your section ; 
and so meet it as if it were possible that some- 
thing may be said on our side. Do you accept 
the challenge ? No ? Then you really believe 
that the principle which our fathers who framed 
the Grovernment under which we five thought 
so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it, 
again and again, upon their official oaths, is, in 
fact so clearly wrong as to demand your con- 
demnation without a moment's consideration. 

Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the 
warning against sectional parties given by 
Washington in his Farewell Address. Less than 
eight years before Washington gave that warn- 
ing, he had, as President of the United States 
approved and signed an act of Congress, enforc- 
ing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest- 
ern Territory, which act embodied the policy 
of the Government upon that subject, up to 
and at the very moment he penned that warn- 
ing ; and about one year after he penned it he 
wrote Lafayette that he considered that prohi- 
bition a wise measure, expressing in the same 
connection his hope that we should some time 
have a confederacy of free States. 

Bearing this in mind, and seeing that section- 
alism has since arisen upon this same subject, 
is that warning a weapon in your hands against 
us, or in our hands against you ? Could Wash- 
ington himself speak, would he cast the blame 
of that sectionalism upon us, who sustain his 
policy, or upon you who repudiate it ? We 
respect that warning of Washington, and we 
commend it to you, together with his example 
pointing to the right application of it. 

But you say you are conservative — emi- 
nently conservative — while we are revolution- 
ary, destructive, or something of the sort. 
What is conservatism ? Is it not adherence to 
the old and tried, against the new and un- 
tried ? We stick to, contend for, the identical 
old policy on the point in controversy which 
was adopted by our fathers who framed the 
Government under which we live , while you 
with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon 
that old poUcy; and insist upon substituting 
something new. True, you disagree among 
yourselves as to what that substitute shall be. 
You have considerable variety of new propo- 
sitions and plans, but you are unanimous in 
■ rejecting and denouncing the old pohcy of the 
lathers. Some of you are for reviving the for- 



7. 



eign slave-trade; some for a Congressional 
Slave-Code for the Territories ; some for Con- 
gress forbidding the Territories to prohibit 
Slavery within their Hmits; some for main- 
taining Slavery in the Territories through the 
Judiciary; some for the "gur-reat pur-rinci- 
ple " that " if one man would enslave another, 
no third man should object," fantastically called 
"Popular Sovereignty;" but never a man a- 
mong you in favor of federal prohibition of 
slavery in federal territories, according to the 
practice of our fathers who framed the Gov- 
ernment under which we live. Not one of all 
your various plans can show a precedent or an 
advocate in the century within which our Gov- 
ernment originated. Consider, then, whether 
your claim of conservatism for yourselves, and 
your charge of destructiveness against us, are 
based on the most clear and stable foundations. 

Again, you say we have made the slavery 
question more prominent than it formerly was. 
We deny it. We admit that it is more prom- 
inent, but we deny that we made it so. It 
was not we, but you, who discarded the old 
policy of the fathers. We resisted, and still 
resist, your innovation ; and thence comes the 
greater prominence of the question. Would 
you have that question reduced to its former 
proportions ? Go back to that old policy. What 
has been will be again, under the same condi- 
tions. If you would have the peace of the old 
times, re-adopt the precepts and policy of the 
old times. 

You charge that we stir up insurrections 
among your slaves. We deny it ; and what is 
your proof? Harper's Ferry! John Brown 1! 
John Brown was no Eepublican ; and you have 
failed to implicate a single RepubUcan in his 
Harper's Ferry enterprise. If any member of 
our party is guilty in that matter, you know it 
or you do not know it. If you do know it, 
you are inexcusable to not designate the man, 
and prove the fact. If you do not know it, 
you are inexcusable to assert it, and especially 
to persist in the assertion after you have tried 
and failed to make the proof. You need not 
be told that persisting in a charge which one 
does not know to be true, is simply malicious 
slander. 

Some of you admit that no Republican de- 
Bignedly aided or encouraged the Harper's Fer- 
ry affair ; but still insist that our doctrines and 
declarations necessarily lead to such results. 
We do not believe it. We know we hold to 



no doctrine, and make no declarations, which 
were not held to and made by our fathers who 
framed the Government under which we live. 
You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this 
affair. When it occurred, some important State 
elections were near at hand, and you were in 
evident glee with the behef that, by charging 
the blame upon us, you could get an advantage 
of us in those elections. The elections came, 
and your expectations were not quite fulfilled. 
Every Republican man knew that, as to him- 
self at least, your charge was a slander, and he 
was not much inclined by it to cast his vote in 
your favor. Republican doctrines and decla- 
rations are accompanied with a continual pro- 
test against any interference whatever with 
your slaves, or with you about your slaves. 
Surely, this does not encourage them to revolt 
True, we do, in common with our fathers, who 
framed the Government under vvhich we live, 
declare our belief that slavery is wrong ; but 
the slaves do not hear us declare even this. 
For anything we say or do, the slaves would 
scarcely know there is a Republican party. I 
believe they would not, in fact, generally know 
it but for your misrepresentations of us, in their 
hearing. In your political contests among 
yourselves, each faction charges the other with 
sympathy with Black Republicanism ; and then, 
to give point to the charge, defines Black Re- 
publicanism to simply be insurrection, blood 
and thunder among the slaves. 

Slave insurrections are no more common 
now than they were before the Republican 
party was organized. What induced the South- 
ampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, 
in which, at least, three times as many Uves 
were lost as at Harper's Ferry ? You can scarce- 
ly stretch your very elastic fancy to the con- 
clusion that Southampton was got up by Black 
RepubUcanism. In the present state of things 
in the United States, I do not think a gen- 
eral, or even a very extensive slave insur- 
rection is possible. The indispensable concert 
of action cannot be attained. The slaves have 
no means of rapid communication ; nor can 
incendiary free men, black or white, supply it. 
The explosive materials are everywhere in par- 
cels ; but there neither are, nor can be supplied, 
the indispensable connecting trains. 

Much is said by southern people about the 
affection of slaves for their masters and mis- 
tresses ; and a part of it, at least, is true. A 
plot for an uprising co.uld scarcely be devised 



8 



and communicated to twenty individuals be- 
fore some one of them, to save the Hfe of a 
favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. 
This is the rule ; and the slave revolution in 
Hayti was not an exception to it, but a case 
occurring under peculiar circumstances. The 
gunpowder-plot of British history, though not 
connected with slaves, was more in point. In 
that case, only about twenty were admitted to 
the secret ; and yet one of them, in his anxiety 
to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, 
and, by consequence, averted the calamity. 
Occasional poisonings from the kitchen, and 
open or stealthy assassinations in the field, and 
local revolts extending to a score or so, will 
continue to occur as the natural results of slave- 
ry ; but no general insurrection of slaves, as I 
think, can happen in this country for a long 
time. Whoever much fears, or much hopes, 
for such an event, will be alike disappointed. 

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered 
many years ago, " It is still in our power to 
direct the process of emancipation, and deporta- 
tion, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as 
that the evil will wear off insensibly ; and their 
places be, pari passu^ filled up by free white 
laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force 
itself on, human nature must shudder at the 
prospect held up." 

Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, 
that the power of emancipation is in the Fed- 
eral Government. He spoke of Virginia ; and, 
as to the power of emancipation, I speak of 
the slaveholding States only. 

The Federal Government, however, as we 
insist, has the power of restraining the exten- 
sion of the institution — the power to insure 
that a slave insurrection shall never occur on 
any American soil which is now free from 
slavery. 

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was 
not a slave insurrection. It was an attempt by 
white men to get up a revolt among slaves, 
in which the slaves refused to participate. In 
fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with 
all their ignorance, saw plainly enough it 
could not succeed. That affair, in its philoso- 
phy, corresponds with the many attempts, re- 
lated in history, at the assassination of kings 
and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the 
oppression of a people till he fancies himself 
commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. 
He ventures the attempt, which ends in little 
else than in his own execution. Orsini's at- 



tempt on Louis Napoleon, and John Brown's 
attempt at Harper's Ferry, were, in their philo- 
sophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to 
cast blame on Old England in the one case, and 
on New England in the other, does not dis- 
prove the sameness of the two things. 

And how much would it avail you, if you 
could, by the use of John Brown, Helper's 
book, and the like, break up the Republican 
organization ? Human action can be modified 
to some extent, but human nature cannot be 
changed. There is a judgment and a feeling 
against slavery in this nation, which cast at 
least a million and a half of votes. You can- 
not destroy that judgment and feeling — that 
sentiment — by breaking up the political organi- 
zation which rallies around it. You can scarce- 
ly scatter and. disperse an army which has been 
formed into order in the face of your heaviest 
fire, but if you could, how much would you 
gain by forcing the sentiment which created it 
out of the peaceful channel of the ballot box, 
into some other channel? What would that 
other channel probably be ? Would the num- 
ber of John Browns be lessened or enlarged 
by the operation ? 

But you will break up the Union rather than 
submit to a denial of jour Constitutional rights. 

That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it 
would be palliated, if not fully justified, were 
we proposing, by the mere force of numbers, 
to deprive you of some right, plainly written 
down in the Constitution. But we are propos- 
ing no such thing. 

When you make these declarations, you have 
a specific and well-understood allusion to an 
assumed Constitutional right of yours, to take 
slaves into the federal territories, and to hold 
them there as property. But no such right is 
specifically written in the Constitution. That 
instrument is literally silent about any such 
right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a 
right has any existence in the Constitution, 
even by implication. 

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that 
you will destroy the Government, unless you 
be allowed to construe and enforce the Con- 
stitution as you please, on all points in dispute 
between you and us. You will rule or ruin in 
all events. 

This, plainly stated, is your language to us. 
Perhaps you will say the Supreme Court has 
decided the disputed Constitutional question in 
your favor. Not quite so. But waiving the 



9 



lawyer's distinction between dictum and deci- 
sion, the Courts have decided the question for 
you in a sort of way. The Courts have sub- 
stantially said, it is your Constitutional right 
to take slaves into the federal territories, and 
to hold them there as property. 

When I say the decision was made in a sort 
of way, I mean it was made in a divided Court 
by a bare majority of the Judges, and they not 
quite agreeing with one another in the reasons 
for making it ; that it is so made as that its 
avowed supporters disagree with one another 
about its meaning; and that it was mainly 
based upon a mistaken statement of fact — the 
statement in the opinion that '' the right of pro- 
perty in a slave is distinctly and expressly 
afl&rmed in the Constitution," 

An inspection of the Constitution will show 
that the right of property in a slave is not dis- 
tinctly and expressly affirmed in it. Bear in 
mind the Judges do not pledge their judicial 
opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in 
the Constitution ; but they pledge their vera- 
city that it is distinctly and expressly affirmed 
there — " expressly " that is, not mingled with 
anything else — " distinctly " that is, in words 
meaning just that, without the aid of any in- 
ference, and susceptible of no other meaning. 

If they had only pledged their judicial opin- 
ion that such right is affirmed in the instrument 
by implication, it would be open to others to 
show that neither the word " slave " nor " sla- 
very " is to be found in the Constitution, nor 
the word " property " even, in any connection 
with language alluding to the things slave, or 
slavery, and that wherever in that instrument 
the slave is alluded to, he is called a "person;" 
and wherever his master's legal right in rela- 
tion to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as 
" service or labor due," as a " debt" payable in 
service or labor. Also, it would be open to 
show, by contemporaneous history, that this 
mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, instead 
of speaking of them, was employed on purpose 
to exclude from the Constitution the idea that 
there could be property m man. 

To show all this is easy and certain. 

When this obvious mistake of the Judges 
shall be brought to their notice, is it not rea- 
sonable to expect that they will withdraw the 
mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclu- 
sion based upon it ? 

And then it is to be remembered that " our 
fathers, who framed the Grovernment under 



which we live " — the men who made the Con- 
stitution — decided this same Constitutional 
question in our favor, long ago — decided it 
without a division among themselves, when 
making the decision ; without division among 
themselves about the meaning of it after it was 
made, and so far as any evidence is left, without 
basing it upon any mistaken statement of facts. 

Under all these circumstances, do you really 
feel yourselves justified to break up this Grov- 
ernment, unless such a court decision as yours 
is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive 
and final rule of political action ? 

But you will not abide the election of a Re- 
publican President. In that supposed event, 
you say, you will destroy the Union ; and then, 
you say, the great crime of having destroyed 
it will be upon us ! 

That is cool, A highwayman holds a pistol 
to my ear, and mutters through his teetli, 
" stand and deliver, or I shall kiU you, and then 
you will be a murderer!" 

To be sure, what the robber demanded of 
me — my money — was my OAvn ; and I had a 
clear right to keep it ; but it was no more my 
own than my vote is my own ; and the threat 
of death to me, to extort my money, and the 
threat of destruction to the Union, to extort my 
vote, can scarcely be distinguished in principle. 

A few words now to Republicans. It is ex- 
ceedingly desirable that all parts of this great 
Confederacy shall be at peace, and in harmony, 
one with another. Let us Republicans do our 
part to have it so. Even though much pro- 
voked, let us do nothing through passion and 
iU temper. Even though the southern people 
will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly 
consider their demands, and yield to them if, in 
our deliberate view of our -duty, we possibly can. 
Judging by all they say and do, and by the sub- 
ject and nature of their controversy with us, let 
us determine, if we can, what will satisfy them ? 

Will they be satisfied if the Territories be 
unconditionally surrendered to them ? We 
know they will not. In all their present com- 
plaints against us, the Territories are scarcely 
mentioned. Invasions and insurrections are 
the rage now. Will it satisfy them if, in the 
future, we have nothing to do with invasions 
and insurrections ? We know it wiU not. We 
so know because we know we never had any- 
thing to do with invasions and insurrections; 
and yet this total abstaining does not exempt 
us from the charge and the denunciation. 



10 



The question recurs, what will satisfy them ? 
Simply this : We must not only let them alone, 
but we must, somehow, convince them that 
we do let them alone. This, we know by ex- 
perience, is no easy task. We have been so 
trying to convince them, from the very begin- 
ning of our organization, but with no success. 
In all our platforms and speeches we have con- 
stantly protested our purpose to let them alone ; 
but this has had no tendency to convince them. 
Alike unavailing to convince them is the fact 
that they have never detected a man of us in 
any attempt to disturb them. • 

These natural, and apparently adequate 
means all failing, what will convince them? 
This, and this only : cease to call slavery wrong, 
and join them in calHng it right. And this 
must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well 
as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — 
we must place ourselves avowedly with them. 
Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted 
and enforced, suppressing all declarations that 
slavery is wrong, whether made in politics in 
presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must 
arrest and return their fugitive slaves with 
greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free- 
State constitutions. The whole atmosphere 
must be disinfected from all taint of opposition 
to slavery, before they -will cease to believe 
that all their troubles proceed from us. 

I am quite aware they do not state their case 
precisely in this way. Most of them would 
probably say to us, " Let us alone, do nothing 
to us, and say what you please about slavery." 
But we do let them alone — have never dis- 
turbed them — so that, after aU it is what we 
say, which dissatisfies them. They will con- 
tinue to accuse us of doing, until we cease 
saying. 

I am also aware they have not, as yet, in 
terms, demanded the overthrow of our Free- 
State Constitutions. Yet those Constitutions 
declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn 
emphasis, than do all other sayings against it ; 
and when all these others sayings shall have 
been silenced, the overthrow of these Consti- 
tutions will be demanded, and nothing be left 
to resist the demand. It is nothing to the 
contrary, that they do not demand the whole 
of this just now. Demanding what they do, 
and for the reason they do, they can voluntarily 
stop nowhere short of this consummation. 
Holding, as they do, that slavery is morally 
right, and socially elevating, they cannot cease 



to demand a fiiU national recognition of it, as 
a legal right, and a social blessing. 

Nor can we justifiably withhold this, on any 
ground save our conviction that slavery is 
wrong. If slavery is right, all words, acts, 
laws, and constitutions against it, are them- 
selves wrong, and should be silenced, and 
swept away. If it is right, we cannot justly 
object to its nationality — its universality ; if it 
is wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its ex- 
tension — its enlargement. AU they ask, we 
could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; 
all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they 
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and 
our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon 
which depends the whole controversy. Think- 
ing it right, as they do, they are not to blame 
for desiring its full recognition, as being right ; 
but thinking it wrong, as we do, can we yield 
to them ? Can we cast our votes with their 
view, and against our own ? In view of our 
moral, social, and political responsibilities, can 
we do this ? 

Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet 
afford to let it alone where it is, because that 
much is due to the necessity arising from its 
actual presence in the nation; but can we, 
while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread 
into the National Territories, and to overrun 
us here in these Free States ? 

If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us 
stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. 
Let us be diverted by none of those sophistical 
contrivanpes wherewith we are so industriously 
plied and belabored — contrivances such as grop- 
ing for some middle ground between the right 
and the wrong, vain as the search for a man 
who should be neither a living man nor 
a dead man — such as a poHcy of " don't care " 
on a question about which all true men do 
care — such as Union appeals beseeching true 
Union men to yield to Disunionists, reversing 
the divine rule, and calling, not the sinners, 
but the righteous to repentance — such as invo- 
cations to Washington, imploring men to unsay 
what Washington said, and undo what Wash- 
ington did. 

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by 
false accusations against us, nor frightened from 
it by menaces of destruction to the Govern- 
ment, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us 
have faith that right makes might, and'in that 
faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as 
we understand it. 



State Rights and the Stjpeeme Cotjet. 



SPEECH 

OF 

SENATOE DOOLITTLE, 

OF WISCONSIN, 

Delivered in the United States Senate, Febrnary 24, 1860. 



Mr. President: It is reported of John 
Quincy Adams that he once said to his friends, 
tiaat the best thing ever uttered by Andrew 
Jackson, was that when he swore to support 
the Constitution, he swore to support it as he 
understood it. I shall make no apology to-day 
for the Supreme Court of Wisconsin for con- 
struing the Constitution of the United States, 
as upon their official oaths, and according to 
their own convictions. It needs none; and 
no Senator has a right to demand one, and 
least of all a Senator from the State of Greopgia. 
-The Supreme Court of Georgia, as late as 1854, 
not six months before the decision of the 
Supreme Court of Wisconsin, of which he 
complains, upon a long and able review of 
this whole controversy, summed up by de- 
claring : 

" The conclusion is that the Supreme Court of Georgia is 
co-equal and co-ordinate with tiie Supreme Court of the 
United States; and not inferior and subordinate to that court. 
That as to the reserved powers, the State Court is Supreme ; 
that as to the delegated powers, the United States Court is 
Supreme; as to powers, both delegated and reserved, the 
concurrent powers of both courts, in the language of Hamil- 
ton, 'are equally supreme,' and that as a consetjuence the 
Supreme Court of the United States lias no jurisdiction over 
the Supreme Court of Georgia, and cannot, therefore, give it 
an order, or make for it a precedent." 

Wisconsin has never gone to that length ; 
she has never yet denied the appellate juris- 
diction of the Supreme Court, in cases acknow- 
ledged to arise under the Constitution of the 
United States. She has only asserted her 
right to judge for herself as to what powers 
are delegated, and what reserved by it ; and 
upon that question her Supreme Court is co- 
equal and co-ordinate with the Supreme Court 
of the United States, and not inferior or sub- 



ordinate to that court. If the Supreme Court 
of Wisconsin has erred in assuming this power 
to judge for itself independently of the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, who taught 
her that important lesson? The Resolutions 
of 1798; every Democratic platform for the 
last twenty years ; the unanimous decision ot 
the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, in 1798 , 
the unanimous opinion of the Court of Ap- 
peals, the Court of last resort, in Virginia, in 
1814 ; the whole judicial history of Georgia — 
now, or soon to become the Empire State of 
the South. (Mr. Doolittle here read from the 
Resolutions of 1798, and the history of the 
controversy in Georgia, showing that the 
State of Georgia denied altogether the appel- 
late jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of the 
United States, and treated that court with 
most profound contempt.) I do not question, 
and have no right to question the integrity or 
good faith of the action of the sovereignties 
of Georgia. I do not indulge, either as a 
matter of taste or inclination, in impugning 
the motives of men in high official station, 
acting on the solemnity of their oaths. The 
motto of old England has too much truth and 
significance for me to do so, either in public 
or private life ; besides, sir, having been reared 
in the Republican school of Jefferson and 
Jackson, and maintaining, as I now do, every 
principle taught in that school, and which, I 
believe, are identical with those of the Repub- 
lican party of to-day — I see many things in 
the opinion of the Supreme Court of Georgia 



12 



to command mj respect. The representatives 
from those States who have taught Wisconsin, 
one of the " youngest sisters," to think for her- 
self, and to be true to her convictions, should 
be among the last to censure or condemn her. 
I come now to the consideration of the precise 
point at issue between the Senator (Toombs) 
and myself as it stands upon the record, and 
as made up by himself. When I first moved 
the postponement of this subject, the issue 
stood in these words on the record^ and as I 
understood it : 

" DooLiTTLE— The assumption of the Senator from Georgia 
in a single word depends entirely upon the question whether 
the law of Congress be or be not constitutional. 

" Toombs— Certainly, sir. 

"DooLiTTLE— If the law is unconstitutional, the whole pro- 
oeedings in the District Court of Wisconsin is a nullity. 

"Toombs— Yes, sir. 

"DooLiT'JLE— Hut if your law is constitutional, then the 
proceeding of the Court of Wisconsin was wrong. 

" Toombs— I have nothing to say to that now." 

The next morning, however, the Senator 
from Greorgia corrected the record, and the 
issue was re-stated in these words : 

"Toombs— Whether or not the law was constitutional, the 
proceeding of the State Court of Wisconsin I hold to be 
wrong. That did not depend upon the question whether the 
Fugitive Slave Law was constitutional or not, and in any 
event the District Court of the United States for ^\"isconsin, 
having had jurisdiction, there was no power to seize a person 
from ijrison under the habeas corpus and reverse the pro- 
ceedings of the Court having competent jurisdiction, and so 
much of the report as makes me admit that in any event, 
whether the Fugitive Slave Law is constitutional or not, the 
proceeding of tlie Court of \\isconsin is right, is erroneous. 
_ "DooLiTTLK— I sha 1 not go into the discussion of this ques- 
tion now, as I propose to discuss that point on a future occa- 
sion ; but simply desire to say, if the Senator from Geoi-gia 
admits the law of Congress is unconstitutional, the District 
Court has no jurisdiction under it, and the proposition which 
the gentleman submits, and the distinction which he makes, 
that a law can be unconstitutional, and a nullity itself, and 
yet the court have jurisdiction under an unconstitutional law, 
IS in my judgment, pi-eposterous. 

"Toombs— I merely wished to state my position, not to 
argue it; 1 am prepared to argue it at any proper time." 

The issue is cleary made on both sides, and 
now fairly understood. It is a question of 
constitutional law, addressed to the judgment, 
to the calm reason, in the discussion of which 
passion and declamation are of no avail. It 
is a question of more consequence than the 
slavery question, and can be discussed entire- 
ly free from all the excitements surrounding 
that question. The question is of the juris- 
diction or authority conferred on the District 
Court of the United States by an unconstitu- 
tional law. I thank the gentleman for thus re- 
stating the issue : he concedes, in my judg- 
ment, the very ground on which the Supreme 
Court of the United States based their decision 
in 21 Howard. [Mr. D. read extract.] Upon 
the assumption taken by the United States 
Supreme Court, that the Fugitive Slave Law 
, is constitutional, the conclusion at which they 
arrive follows irresistibly that a person arrested 
under it would be imprisoned under the au- 
thority of the United States, and a State Court 



on habeas corpus must remand him into cus- 
tody, for he would be under legal restraint. 
To take the other assumption, that it is not 
constitutional, a person arrested under it would 
be imprisoned without authority of the United 
States, and the State Court on a habeas corpus 
must discharge him, because he is under no 
legal restraint. What is the issue on the 
hearing of a habeas corpus case ? The juris- 
diction of the court in such a case is not ap- 
pellate ; not for review ; not to reverse the 
judgment of other tribunals, but it is a suit to 
inquire into the cause of the imprisonment of 
a citizen, and if illegal, to discharge him. The 
very essence of the issue is, is his imprison- 
ment legal or illegal ? with, or without law ? 
That is the question. Let us for once take 
the negro out of the question, and forget that 
slaves or slavery ever existed. A habeas 
corpus case is a collateral suit in which the 
proceedings and judgments of other courts are 
inquired into just to the same extent as they 
are inquired into upon actions for false impri- 
sonment or in suits upon a judgment. 

To test the position assumed by the Senator, 
he saj^s, " Concede the Fugitive Slave Law to 
be unconstitutional, and still the District Court 
of the United States for Wisconsin had compe- 
tent jurisdiction." What a solecism I All the 
world knows that the United States District 
Court has a special and limited jurisdiction, and 
only so much as the law of Congress under the 
Constitution confers; all else is reserved to the 
State courts. An unconstitutional law is no 
law — it is a mere nulHty. The Constitution 
goes with every enactment annulling every 
provision repugnant to itself; it is the Consti- 
tution which breathes into it the breath of life ; 
every law is enacted with a proviso implying 
that it is not repugnant to the Constitution ; in 
the cant phrase, it has force " subject only to 
the Constitution of the United States." Hold 
a man in prison under the authority of the 
United States, when the Constitution, the 
source of all authority, forbids it ! Go tell the 
people of G-eorgia that her Senator contends 
that a law of Congress can give to a United 
States District Court competent jurisdiction 
over a subject matter which the Constitution 
itself forbids I That is higher-law doctrine for 
you with a vengeance ! The courts, then, are 
above, and not under the Constitution ! Bring 
this doctrine to a practical test, and suppose 



13 



Congress, under the general-welfare doctrine, 
should enact a law, and confer general original 
jurisdiction of all suits of law or in equity, and 
between citizens of the same State ; one citizen 
of a State commences an action against another 
for slander in the United States District Court ; 
a trial is had, judgment rendered, the defend- 
ant arrested upon the execution ; upon a peti- 
tion to the State court for a habeas corpus, the 
petitioner complains that he is restrained of his 
hberty without any legal cause. The return 
on its face shows that he is held under the pre- 
tended authority of the Court of the United 
States. The answer of the petitioner at once 
is, that the law under which he is held is a 
nulhty, is imconstitutional, it is upon a subject 
matter which the Constitution itself expressly 
forbids, and therefore the court which rendered 
the judgment had no jurisdiction, had no au- 
thority to imprison the person of a citizen. Is 
not that a sufficient answer ? Or suppose the 
case to be an action for false imprisonment 
brought against the Marshal, would not the 
State be compelled to pass on the constitution- 
ality of the law, and declare the court had no 
jurisdiction ? "Without jurisdiction in the court 
there could be no judgment; the whole pro- 
ceeding is Coram non judice. It is begging 
the whole question ; reasoning in a circle. It 
is hke saying the world stands upon an ele- 
phant, the elephant on a turtle, and the turtle 
on nothing. Does a court have juiisdiction by 
its own mere ipse dixit ? Take the c^e of the 
United States District Court of Wisconsin, and 
see where this doctrine would lead. We have 
no Circuit Judge of the Udted States. Our 
District Judge holds both District and Circuit 
Court; there can be no division of opinion in 
the court, and therefore no appeal. It is with 
no disrespect to the Judge of this Court that 
I say tVt the same Judge may indict, try, and 
senterce, even to death, any man, woman, or 
child in Wisconsin, and there is practically no 
appeal to any other Court of the United States. 
Add this doctrine of the Senator from Geor- 
gia, and there would be no constitutional hmit 
upon his power — whether constitutional or un- 
constitutional — whether within or without the 
authority of the United States ; whether within 
or outside of his constitutional jurisdiction, 
with or without cause, by his warrant alone he 
could arrest any citizen of Wisconsin, try him, 
sentence him, even to death, and there is no 
appeal No habeas corpus could reach the 



prisoner, whether in the State Prison or at the 
foot of the gallows ! Where are we ? In the 
United States of America, or at St. Peters- 
burg, under the power of an autocrat, whose 
will is law ; or under the Constitution of the 
United States, which declares that no person 
shall be deprived of his hberty but by due pro- 
cess of law, which law must itself be subject 
always to the Constitution of the United States? 
Mr. Doolittle then referred to the character 
of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, the Judges 
of which were chosen before the organization 
of the Repubhcan party, and paid an eloquent 
tribute to the worth, probity, and high judicial 
character of Chief Justice Whiton, deceased ; 
referred to the opinions in the cases of Able- 
man, Booth, and Rycraft, in 3d Wisconsin Re- 
ports. He gave a history of the cases growing 
out of the rescue of a fugitive from Missouri 
in 1854, for which Booth was arrested by Uni- 
ted States Marshal Ableman. After a hearing, 
Booth was discharged on writ of habeas cor- 
pus, on four grounds ; because the warrant on 
its face did not state any offence under the act ; 
because the act itself was repugnant to the 
Constitution, in clothing mere Commissioners 
with judicial powers, and also denying a jury 
trial to a person claiming to be a free inhabit- 
ant of Wisconsin, and because the Constitution 
gives Congress no power to legislate on that 
subject. Afterward, Booth and Rycraft were 
rearrested, and convicted in the District Court, 
but discharged on a hearing before a full bench 
of the Supreme Court; read from the opinions, 
1 Justices Crawford and Whiton, 3d Wisconsin 
Reports, pp. 79, 80, 81, 82 ; also, 66, 68 ; also, 
175-6-7-8. He continued — Question his opin- 
ions if you will, confute them if you can ; but 
where, I ask, is any evidence to be found in the 
opinions, of bad faith, or corruption in office, 
of official "perjury;" of raising his "blood-stained 
hands over a violated Constitution." That Sen- 
ator (Toombs) owes it to himself, to this Sen- 
ate, to the State of Wisconsin, to the sacred 
memory of the dead, to take back every word 
that he has uttered, calculated to impugn in the 
least degree the uprightness and integrity of 
that Judge who pronounced the decision of 
which he complains. [He read further from 
opinions of Judge Smith, 3d Wisconsin Re- 
port, pp. 13, 23,193-4, 114, 116-17, 119-20- 
21]. Mr. D. commended these entire opinions 
to the Senate and the country as opinions of 
able Judges, thoughtful and earnest men, grap- 



14 



pling with the gravest questions underlying the 
whole system of G-overnment. He admitted 
that had he been consulted, as a lawyer, at that 
time, as to the power of Congress to legislate 
on the subject of the rendition of fugitives from 
service, he should have declared in favor of that 
power. Since then, however, by the able dis- 
cussion of the subject in his own State, and by 
his own careful attention, he now agreed with 
Justice Smith and his colleagues of the Su- 
preme Court of Wisconsin. 

Mr. Webster also maintained the same opin- 
ion, that it belonged to the States and not to 
Congress to legislate on the subject. Such, 
also, he understood to have been the opinion 
of Mr. Calhoun and Judge Butler of South 
Carolina, as to the original question ; and such, 
it seemed to him, must be the true construc- 
tion of all persons, brought up in the school 
of sturdy old Eepublicanism. In his opinion, 
a large majority of the Republicans of Wiscon- 
sin approved of the decision of the Court. 
Many Democrats also, brought up in the school 
of Jefferson and Jackson, sustained the action 
of the Court in interpreting the Constitution 
as they understood it. It was not a strict par- 
ty question in Wisconsin. The doctrine of the 
Senator from Georgia, as to the power of the 
Supreme Court, led to absolutism and despo- 
tism. It is the tendency of the Judicial au- 
thority to usurp legislative powers. He quoted 
from Mr. Buchanan, that the judges always 
lean to the prerogative of power, and contrast- 
ed the difference between the views of Judge 
Marshall as a member of the Constitutional 
Convention and as Chief Justice of the United 



States. He also contrasted Judge Taney as 
Secretary under Jackson, sustaining him in his 
position that he should administer the Consti- 
tution as he understood it, and Taney as Chief 
Justice, leaning toward the consolidation of 
federal power. The Supreme Court now as- 
serted the legahty of slavery in the Territories, 
and the next plank added to the Democratic 
platform would be the declaration at Charleston 
of the infallibility of the Supreme Court. In 
the headstrong zeal pursued by the other party 
to force slavery in the Territories they have 
ceased to be Republicans, and become advo- 
cates of the most federal doctrine of the old 
federal party against which Jefferson uttered 
his loudest thunders. He quoted Jefferson's 
opinion of the Supreme Court, in which he 
held that it sought, by sapping and mining, to 
subvert the Constitution and press us into one 
Consolidated G-overnment. The great question 
in the science of American Government was, 
when the jurisdiction of the State and Federal 
Governments came in conflict. Who was to 
decide ? It would never do to say that the de- 
cisions of the Federal Courts should be received 
as final and conclusive. When it usurps power 
its decisions must not be respected, and are 
binding upon nobody. When a State and the 
United States differ, there is no common um- 
pire but the people. He beheld a party calling 
itself Democratic, in face of its own platform, 
now bowing down to worship at the feet of 
an imperial court, and which had asserted this 
new doctrine of judicial infallibihty, of "im- 
maculate decision," in order to irrevocably fix 
slavery in the Territories. 



15 



MED ART'S VETO. 



" Popular Sovereignty" m the Territories, 
as embodied in Douglas's Nebraska Bill and 
Buchanan's electioneering pledge to leave them 
" perfectly free" to do as they pleased on the 
subject, was already a stale joke; but Gov. 
Medary's late veto has given it a new and vivid 
elucidation. 

We presume there are not many Americans 
who can read who are unaware that the people 
of Kansas are hostile to Human Slavery. They 
have said so in every election held in their Ter- 
ritory since 1854, when they were not over- 
borne by border ruffian invasion ; they said so 
emphatically in their overwhelming vote to 
reject the Lecompton Constitution ; they said 
it again in calling, then in electing the Consti- 
tional Convention which met last summer at 
Wyandot ; and yet again in ratifying the Con- 
stitution there made ; and still again in elect- 
ing the Free State Ticket to compose and or- 
ganize a State G-overnment under that Consti- 
tution. Gov, Medary ought certainly to be 
aware of all this ; for he has fought it step by 
step, and was the opposing candidate for Gov- 
ernor at the late election, and badly beaten. 

Yet Kansas is still constructively a Slave 
Territory — " as much slaveholding as Alabama 
or Georgia," says President Buchanan. A very 
few slaves, we understand, are still held there, 
in pro-slavery nooks and corners, and a slave 
was not long since advertised for sale on an 
execution for debt in Leavenworth county. 
The Territorial Legislature tried last year to 
abolish slavery, but the Governor baffled them ; 
and this year's Legislature returned to the 
charge, passing, by a large majority, a biU which 
reads thus : 

An Act to Abolish Slavery. 

Section 1, Be it enacted, <&c.. That slavery or involuntary 
servitude, except for the punishment of crime, whereof the 
party shall have been duly convicted, is and shall be forever 
abolished in this Territory. 

Sec. 2. This act shall take effect and be in force from and 
after its passage. 

That is a short act, and not hard to under- 
stand. Let us look first at the dignified grounds 
on which President Buchanan's Governor bases 
his veto of it : 

To the Honorable, the House of Eepresentatives : 

Gentlemen: I have received the bill entitled, "An Act to 
Prohibit Slavery in Kansas," and. not satisfied that it accom- 
plishes what its title imports, I return it. with reasons. 

This bill appears to be more political than practical; more 
for the purpose of obtaming men's opinions than for any ben- 
efit or injury it can be to any one. I am the more fully con- 
vinced of this. Irom the articles which have appeared in the 
organs of the Republican party in this Territory, which, it is 
proper to presume, speak by authority of those they represent. 
Two of the papers before me call upon you to pass this bill, to 
see what I may say, and compel me to act m the premises. 
The Republican," of this place, is very emphatic, and " The 
Champion," of Atchison City, edited by the Secretary of the 
Wyandot Constitutional Convention, "dares" you repeatedly 
to fail m sending this bill to me, to get my action upon it for 
political purposes. 



"The Republican" says: "We want to test Gov. Medary." 
"The Champion" says: "If Medary will take the responsi- 
bility of vetoing it, pass it over his head, and then let them 
bring the subject before the courts, and have Judge Taney 
make another advance in his theories respecting the constitu- 
tion. VVe shall see, then, what these Democrats, who howl 
about ' as-good-Free-State-men-as-you-are,' will do when called 
upon to act. And we shall see whether there is anything in 
their professions of 'Squatter Sovereignty.' " 

Always willing to accommodate political opponents, as well 
as friends, with my views on politics or any other subject, I 
accept the invitation with pleasure, and offer this as an apolo- 
gy for the extent I may go in satisfying so generous a demand. 

Of course — since Governors are but men, and 
often very small men — bills have doubtless been 
vetoed ere now on grounds as frivolous and ir- 
relevant as these ; but we doubt that any Gov- 
ernor was ever till now foohsh enough to make 
such avowals. 

We wish we could make room for the whole 
of this unique and facetious Veto Message, but 
its inordinate length forbids. It embodies a 
synopsis of the pohtical history of our country, 
as seen through the Medary spectacles — tracing 
the descent of the Eepubhcans from the Tories 
of the Revolution, and proving that the Fede- 
rahsts and New England men were always 
wrong, unpatriotic, short-sighted and anti-pro- 
gressive, while the Democrats were just the 
opposite — ergfo, the Legislature of Kansas have 
no right to abohsh slavery 1 A Territorial has 
a gTeat deal more power than a State Legisla 
ture, but not enough to enable it to decree that 
one man shall not legally and rightfully sell 
another man's innocent wife and children by 
auction to the highest bidder I Coming at 
length somewhere near the matter in contro- 
versy, Gov. Medary says : 

There is a misapprehension of terms, in saying that the Con- 
stitution of the United States carries slavery into Territories, 
or any kind of property. The Constitution only protects pro- 
perty when carried there, and all contracts, obligations and 
agreements between man and man. It is not a respecter of 
persons or property, but operates with equal force upon all, 
and in the absence of the exercise of sovereignty in such Ter- 
ritory, it is authoritative in the protection of all. A Constitu- 
tion protective not creative. A Territorial Legislature might 
refuse to pass laws to punish horse-thieves, yet my horses are 
as much mine as before, and would still be mine if stolen, and 
I would have a right to sell him, if I could get a purchaser. 

The Constitution of the United States extends over all the 
persons and property of the country and far out into the sea. 
It knows no distinctions and cannot know any. Sorghum, 
quite a new thing in Kansas, and unknown to the country 
when the Constitution was adopted, is just as much property 
as Indian corn. It is most remarkable that it never suggested 
itself to any one to pass a local law declaring Sorghum prop- 
erty, and securing it to the possession of the holder, so as to 
make it theft to steal it. 

Clear as mud, you see ; only it don't explain 
how the Lord came to make such egregious 
fools as Mansfield, Brougham, and other jurists, 
who have adjudged that the ownership of one 
man by another is not so natural and indefea- 
sible as his ownership of a horse or donkey. 
Can it be that Aristocracy and Toryism have 
blinded these jurists to truths which are clear 
to the luminous intellect of a Medary ? — New 
York Tribune. 



u 



parties nnb P0litic0. 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. P. P. MURPHY, 



OF THE 29tli DISTRICT. 



ON THE 



GOTEE]N"OE'S MESSAGE. 



m SENATE, MARCH 6, 1860. 



ALBANY : 

WEED, PARSONS & COMPANY, PRINTERS 

1860. 



Parties and Politics. 



SPEECH 



or 



HON. P. P, MURPHY, 

OF THE 29tli DISTRICT, 



GOVERNOR'S MESSAGE. 



IN SENATE -MARCH 6, 1860. 



Mr. Chairman : In rising to address the Sen- 
ate on this occasion, I shall not affect a diflQ.dence 
I do not feel ; and though I cannot hope to in- 
terest or instruct you with the rounded periods 
of the essayist, like the Hon. Senator from the 
1st ; the logic and eloquence of the Senator from 
the 13th, or the poetic inspiration of the Senator 
from the 9th — yet, I trust, the plain language of 
a plain man, expressing the convictions of an 
intelligent and conscientious constituency, will 
not be considered out of place at this time. 

And, at this stage of the discussion, I wish to 
say, that we accept the sentiments of Grov. 
Morgan^ in his Annual Message, and those of 
Senator Seward, as given in his several speeches 
since the organization of the Republican party, 
"irrepressible conflict "and "higher law" in- 
cluded, as sound expositions of the doctrines of 
the Republican party, and which commend 
themselves alike to the head and the heart of 
every lover of his country, of his race and of 
free institutions. 

Strange it may seem, that Democratic Senators 
on this floor, have not had even a passing fling 
at the "higher law." Is it possible that even 
the "Democracy" are beginning to feel the 
effects of the great moral and religious sentiment 
of the free states pressing upon them ? 

Yes, sir, in my place as a Senator on this floor, 
and in the name of my constituents, do I thank 
Mr. Seward for his enunciation of that great and 
sublime truth. 

Let us look for a moment at the time when it 
was made, and the circumstances by which he 
was surrounded. Senators were stricken down 
in the halls of legislation ; bowie knives, pistols 
and clubs were the means used by the so-called 
Democratic leaders, to intimidate and overcome 



the friends of freedom. The aristocratic element 
was controlling the administration, and the 
** fool who saith in his heart there is no God," 
was filling the high places of trust and power, 
whilst the friends of freedom were dispirited 
and dejected. 

A howl of mingled rage, astonishment and 
anger went up from every Democratic press and 
every Democratic gathering in the land ; from 
the degraded pot-house politician in the most 
bestial, subterranean den in New York, to the 
cabinet minister ; it was equally a matter of 
wonder, that any man dare be so bold as to ques- 
tion the omnipotence of slavery, or to entertain 
the idea which had become obsolete among De- 
mocratic politicians, that the laws of the Great 
Maker and Ruler of the Universe, were to be 
obeyed in preference to the laws imposed by the 
slave power. 

This position of Mr. Seward was founded on 
the rock of eternal truth, and the waves of 
obscurity, infidelity and slavery, were dashed 
against it in vain ; the intelligent and right 
thinking rallied to its support, and its assailants 
retired from the contest abashed and defeated. 

Next came the statement by Mr, Seward in his 
Rochester speech of the " Irrepressible conflict," 
and was greeted by the democracy with the 
direst denunciations and misrepresentations. Let 
us examine it. 

From the earliest period of the existence of the 
human race, until the present time, this conflict 
has been going on ; the conflict of truth against 
error, right against wrong, freedom against 
slavery ; it is truly irrepressible, and thus it will 
continue while there is a master on the one side 
and a slave on the other. 

When the poor slave thinks, he becomes con- 



scious of tlie truth tliat lie derives his manhood 
from the same Almighty Power which created his 
oppressor, that he is naturally his equal, that he 
has the same natural right to his own bone and 
muscle, to his own thews and sinews, to love 
and protect his wife and children as the aris- 
tocrat. 

The history of our race on its every page, bears 
evidence to the truth of this statement. Witness 
the history of the feudal system in Europe, and 
its extinguishment gradually and peaceably in 
some countries, as in England, by the force and 
determination of the people on the one side, and 
the giving way of the oppressor on the other, 
although even then the irrepressible conflict 
cost a raonarch his head, as well as crown. 

In France, on the contrary, the oppression was 
smothered in the blood of the oppressors, and 
royal family and nobles alike were sent to a 
gory grave, in the blind rage of an infuriated 
people. We occasionally hear people exclaim 
against the horrors of the French revolution. It 
is not to be wondered at for a moment. The 
people of France had been imbruted, through 
centuries of oppression and serfage ; and when 
you systematically deprive a man of the means 
of progress, when you make it a crime for him 
to learu to read, or to speak his thoughts, when 
you seek to make him a mere unreasoning ma- 
chine, can you be surprised that when he sees 
his oppressor prostrate before him, he should 
act like what you sought to make him by the 
system of serfdom, a wild beast? 

In this irrepressible conflict our fathers bore 
a distinguished part. When they entei-ed the 
contest for freedom and the rights of man against 
the mighty power of the British Empire, they 
proclaimed the great truths, *' that all men were 
created free and equal," and that " governments 
only derived their just powers from the consent 
of the governed," and on these issues they staked 
*' their lives, their fortunes and their sacred 
honor." 

To us, their sons, has this heir-loom descended, 
the contest against oppression and tyranny. May 
we be worthy the heritage and equal to the 
" irrepressible conflict." 

The honorable senator from the 13th (Mr. 
Colvin), declared his adhesion to the doctrines 
of the Jefifersonian Republican party, and to the 
present Republican party, its lineal successor, 
with but one exception. And when I heard him, 
declare, learned lawyer as he is well known to 
be, and in the glowing language of his impas- 
sioned eloquence, that slavery has no existence 
in natural law, but is the creature only of posi- 
tive law, and cannot exist beyond the law which 
created it, and when he declared his unflinch- 
ing opposition to its extension into the territo- 
ries, I recognized my gallant and talented old 
fellow soldier and colleague of the campaign of 
'48, and I could not avoid asking myself the 
sorrowful question, alas! " and did he too go up 
and acquiesce ?" 

But, sir, he has become somewhat of a mono- 
maniac on squatter sovereignty, and with him it 
is a myth, an ideal ; his excited imagination has 
clothed it in all the gorgeous hues of the rain- 
bow, and I cannot doubt his sincerity, when he 
declared his belief that it was for squatter 
sovereignty our fathers fought against England in 
the war of the revolution. 



The act may be an ungracious one toward the 
honorable senator, but I must be permitted to 
examine the doctrine as reduced to practice, 
under a democratic administration, and carried 
out by democratic officials in Kansas and Ne- 
braska ; and if it does not appear the same 
thing in practice that it does in the imaginary 
description of the senator from the 13th, recol- 
lect that with him it is an ideal, while the other 
is the stern reality of democratic practice. 

All the executive, judicial and administrative 
officers are appointed by the President and are 
his mere creatures, the governor having a veto 
over the acts of the territorial legislature, with- 
out being in any way or manner responsible to 
the people for his acts. 

How was it with the colonies, previous to and 
at the time of the Revolution ? Was not the 
government precisely the same ? Was not the 
governor, judges, marshals, all the executive, 
judicial and administrative officers appointed by 
the royal power ; the royal governor possessing 
also the veto power, and frequently exercising it 
to arrest the passage of laws by the colonial le- 
gislatures, which he apprehended might be dis- 
tasteful to the sovereign or infringe upon the 
royal prerogative % 

Did not Jefierson, in his first draft of the De- 
claration of Independence, complain of the royal 
governors, that they had interposed the veto, 
when the colonies had passed laws, forbidding 
the introduction of slaves 1 And have not the De- 
mocratic governors of Kansas and Nebraska also 
exercised the veto power to annul the passage of 
laws excluding slaves and slavery from those 
territories ? Can the parallel be more complete ; 
the royal, democratic governors of the present 
day, following with singular and instinctive fide- 
lity to their aristocratic and federal principles, 
the examples of their illustrious predecessors in 
the reign of his majesty George III. Further, 
whenever a royal governor failed in his duty to 
the crown, in not repressing the exhibitions of 
popular sentiment and feeling, he was removed 
for his disloyalty. 

'.The long line of Democratic governors, whose 
carcasses cumber the plains of Kansas, when- for 
a moment they hesitated in their fidelity to the 
aristocracy ; or if a suspicion was excited that 
they were deficient in those cardinal virtues of a 
servitor of despotism, passive obedience and 
non-resistance, they were brought to the block, 
and no plea of former services rendered to the 
slave power availed them, or stopped for a mo- 
ment the descent of the fatal axe. 

Is more needed to complete the parallel of 
squatter sovereignty to the government of the 
colonies ; history furnishes it to our hands, in 
the disturbed state of the country previous to and 
at the time of the Revolution, the armed force 
kept here to prevent the gatherings of the peo- 
ple, and to reduce them to submission. Were 
not citizens of Boston shot down in the street 
by a hireling soldiery, and yesterday, sir, the 
5th of March, was the anniversary of the bloody 
deed, long held in remembrance by the people 
of that city ? And did not the tory papers of that 
day ridicule and traduce the shriekers for free- 
dom in the colonies, and denounce them as 
rebels and traitors ? And have we not had the 
same scenes re-enacted in Kansas ? Was not 
that territory invaded by hordes of armed Mis- 



sourians, all "sound on the goose," in the inte- 
rest of slavery, and headed by that eminent Demo- 
crat, drunken Dave Atchison, ex-president, pro 
tern, of that august body, the Senate of the United 
States ? Was not Lawrence sacked and pillaged ; 
citizens of the territory shot down in cold blood 
and left weltering on her plains '? Did not De- 
mocratic politicians, and Democratic papers ap- 
plaud the acts and denounce every man who 
ventured to remonstrate, as shriekers for free- 
dom and sympathisers with the rebels and 
traitors of Kansas, as they were called by the 
aristocrats and slaveholders in possession of the 
general government. And as our fathers re- 
belled against the colonial governments, and the 
tyranny of royal governors, and drove out their 
invaders, so did our brethern in Kansas rebel 
against Democratic squatter sovereignty, when 
reduced to practice, and drive out the Missouri 
invaders, who sought to fasten slavery upon 
her. 

After the revolutionary war, the first we heard 
of squatter sovereignty was from St. Clair, the 
federal governor of the Northwestern territory, 
appointed by the elder Adams. St. Clair enun- 
ciated the doctrine in an address to the territo- 
rial legislature in 1803, for the doing of which 
he was removed from office by Jefferson, the then 
President. 

It next was exhumed and brought to light by 
General Cass, in his Nicholson letter of 1847, a 
fitting resurrectionist of the old federal doctrine;- 
for his laudation of Louis Phillipe and the 
crowned heads and courts of Europe, proved his 
adaptation to the task. 

In 1856, the convention at Cincinnati adopted 
it, declaring it a democratic dogma, and that a 
belief in it is necessary to political salvation, 
and also affirmed that the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, and the enactment of the Kansas 
and Nebraska territorial law, were founded on 
this principle. 

The federalists, aristocrats and slaveholders, 
continued in its support so long as they sup- 
posed it would be to their interest, and when it 
no longer served their turn, they cast it aside in 
their democratic senatorial caucus, and advanced 
to the position that both Congress and the terri- 
torial legislature cannot legislate against Slavery 
in the territories, but are obliged, when neces- 
sary, to legislate for its protection. 

The Little Griant could not remain long behind. 
So, on Wednesday last he made his last great bid 
for the Charleston nomination, by making the 
shameless admission that squatter sovereignty 
was a snare and a delusion from the beginning ; 
and that he all the while intended Slavery should 
go into the territories. The following is his 
language : " But inasmuch as the power to in- 
troduce Slavery, notwithstanding the Mexican 
laws, was conferred on the territorial legislatures 
under the compromise measures of 1850, the 
right to introduce it into Kansas, notwithstand- 
ing the Missouri restriction, was also proposed 
to be conferred, without expressly repealing the 
restriction. The legal eff'ect was precisely the 
same." 

Now, gentlemen, we are ready for the contest. 
We challenge you to the combat, with Stephen 
A. Douglas, squatter sovereignty, old federalism, 
extension of Slavery and niggers for the nigger- 
less on the one side ; and on the other, Wm. H. 
Seward, the principles of Jefi^erson and the 



Fathers, in the government of the territories, 
the restriction of Slavery, land for the landless, 
and the protection of the rights of labor against 
capital. 

Such are the platforms upon which the res- 
pective parties go before the people. On these 
the political battle is to be fought, and may God 
defend the right. 

At the close of the revolutionary struggle, the 
country was exhausted by the long continuance 
of the war, the destruction of commerce and 
the diversion of industry from all its accustomed 
pursuits, in addition, a new form of government 
had to be instituted; for the old articles of con- 
federation were found to be a failure, a mere 
rope of sand which could not bind the country 
together. 

There were men who had lent all their ener- 
gies to the contest in separating this country 
from England, yet they had been so moulded by 
education and habit to a conformity with exist- 
ing forms of government, that they dared not 
think of any other ; they had no confidence in 
the capacity of, the people for self-government, 
and were desirous of establishing a limited mo- 
narchy, or as near it as they could arrive. At 
the head of this class stood Alexander HamiU 
ton, a man of rare endowments and of undoubt- 
ed patriotism, but who distrusted the people. 

On the other side were those who desired to 
make the people sovereign, who had confidence 
in them, in their honesty, integrity and capacity; 
and who so fit to lead this body of men, as he 
who gave to the world the immortal truths em- 
bodied in the Declaration of Independence. Thus 
Hamilton became the representative of the one 
set of ideas, and Jefferson of the other. 

These were the warring elements in the Con- 
vention that framed the Constitution of the 
United States, and as neither party fully triumph- 
ed, the Constitution as framed and submitted to 
the States for adoption, was a partial compro- 
mise. 

When the new government was organized 
under the Constitution and put in operation, 
•these conflicting ideas sought to give each its 
own construction to the Constitution, and im- 
press its own character upon the organization of 
the general government. 

The Federalists, under the lead of Hamilton 
and Adams, were desirous of centralizing all 
power, and limiting and weakening the several 
state governments, insisting that all power not 
denied by the Constitution to the United States, 
belonged of right to the general government, and 
should be exercised by it. 

The contrary opinion was entertained by Jef- 
ferson, Madison and the Republican party, who 
succeeded in adding to the Constitution amend- 
ments, embodying their views, as follows, viz. : 

Article 9. " The enumeration in the Consti- 
tution of certain rights, shall not be construed to 
deny or disparage others retained by the people." 

Article 10. '' The powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited 
by it to the states, are reserved to the states re- 
spectively or to the people." 

The passage of the alien and sedition laws, 
during the administration of the elder Adams, 
assisted in driving the Federal party from power, 
and the commencement of the present century 
saw the Republican party take the place of its 
opponents in the government of the country. 



During all this contest, no voice was raised in 
favor of slavery ; our fathers, fresh from the 
battle fields of the Revolution, whatever their 
peculiar views in regard to the form of govern- 
ment, chattel slavery was alike abhorrent to 
all. 

The language of the preamble to that glorious 
compact, is characteristic of their devotion to the 
doctrine of personal liberty, and is in the follow- 
ing words, viz. : 

" We, the People of the United States, in 
order to form a more perfect union, establish 
justice, ensure domestic tranquillity, provide for 
common defense, promote the general welfare 
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and our posterity, do ordain and establish this 
Constitution for the United States of America." 

The ordinance of 1787, re-enacted in 1789 by 
the first Congress, which assembled under the 
Constitution, and by which slavery was excluded 
from all the then territory of the United States, 
proves conclusively that chattel slavery was re- 
garded as alike in opposition to the laws of God, 
and those principles upon which, in the face of 
the world, they had rested tWr defense in 
throwing off their allegiance to the mother 
country. 

The leading ideas of Republican statesmen 
were circumscribing slavery and extending free- 
dom, to preserve the territories of the United 
States as a sacred inheritance for freemen for- 
ever, both of native and foreign birth, and to 
keep them unpolluted by the footstep of the 
slave, the clanking of his manacles or the crack 
of the driver's whip. 

This was the settled policy of the Republican 
party, and continued as long as the party ex- 
isted under that distinctive name. 

In 1811, the people of the territory of Indiana, 
petitioned Congress to be permitted to hold 
slaves. The petition was referred to a commit- 
tee, of which the celebrated John Randolph 
(himself a slaveholder, be it remembered) was 
chairman, and who reported against the prayer 
of the petitioners in the most decided language. 

In 1803, Louisiana was acquired from France 
by purchase ; slavery existed there at the time, 
and by virtue of the stipulations of the treaty it 
continued in existence. 

In 1820, after a long struggle, Missouri was 
admitted as a slave state, but with the distinct 
stipulation in the 8th section of the act admitting 
her, that slavery or involuntary servitude, ex- 
cept as a punishment for crime, should never 
exist north of the line of 86° 30'. This formed 
the celebrated Missouri Compromise, and was 
claimed by the slaveholders as a victory, having 
obtained possession of all the settled portion of 
the territory. 

But so strong was the feeling in the free states 
against this surrender of territory to slavery, 
that every northern member who voted for it 
went down under the indignation of his constitu- 
ents. 

Thus it will be seen that the principles of the 
JeSersonian Republican party were identical with 
those now held by the present party bearing that 
name ; the same opposition to the extension of 
slavery into the territories, the same desire to 
keep them for the free white man and his family 
to settle and cultivate, the same respect for the 
personal rights of man and the same declaration 



of the rights and duties of Congress in the gov- 
ernment of the people's property. 

The fears of Jefferson regarding the aristocratic 
tendencies of the Supreme Court of the United 
States have become sad realities ; holding office 
by a life tenure, under no responsibility to the 
people, they arrogate to themselves the right to 
determine the power and duties of co-ordinate 
and independent branches of the government, to 
change the spiritof the Constitution by construc- 
tion and to decide political questions which only 
belong to the people to determine. 

In 1824 there were five Republican candidates 
in the field, for the Presidency ; the old Federal 
party having disbanded, the members of it still 
imbued with the old j)rinciples of the party, were 
scattered loose around among the supporters of 
the difierent candidates ; the result of that con- 
test, which was decided in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, is well known. In 1828 a re-organiza- 
tion took place under Jackson and the democratic 
party was the result. 

The principles of the old Republican party 
continued to govern the Democratic until the 
election of Polk, who in an evil hour succumbed 
to Calhounismand old federalism, and since then 
the retrogression of the party has been constant 
and rapid, with an old Federalist at the head of 
the government as President, an old federalist as 
Chief Justice, and nuUifiers and disunionists fill- 
ing all the high posts of government and control- 
in g the administration. 

The Missouri Compromise was repealed by a 
Democratic Congress ; the bill was introduced by 
Stephen A. Douglas, without a single petition 
asking for it even from the South ; it was carried 
through both houses by a Democratic majority 
and approved by a Democratic President. 

Further, the President promised in advance to 
take care of those members of Congress from 
the free states, who should vote for it contrary 
to the wishes of their constituents and suffer a 
loss in consequence of that vote. 

And well did the President fulfill that promise. 
But few of the recreant members were returned 
at the next congressional election, and the poli- 
tical bankrupts were quartered by the President 
on the foreign missions and consulates ; thus, 
proving, beyond the possibility of denial, that 
the Democratic party systematically rewards 
representatives who will betray their constitu- 
ents. Was anything more vile, more demoraliz- 
ing, more wicked, ever practised in the despotic 
governments of Europe ? When the news came 
north, the softs fretted and fumed, talked loudly 
about their opposition to tlie extension of 
slavery, and their devotion to freedom; but 
when they took the " sober second thought, 
and recollected that slavery had the disposal of 
the offices, their anger cooled down, they took 
the back track, went up to Syracuse and ac- 
quiesced. The hards brazened it out ; they de- 
serve respect for being^ consistent even in the 
wrong. 

Although they have thrown away all of the 
principles of Old Hickory, yet they retain some 
share of his outspoken frankness. And when 
they have made up their mind to serve the 
devil (which they often do), they will describe 
him at full length, horns, cloven foot, tail and 
all, while the softs, under the same circum- 
stances, yes, even in the act of acquiescing, will 
swear you that the object of their devotion is ai 



angel of light. Such men do " steal the livery 
of the court of Heaven to serve the devil in. 

There arose at nearly the same time, two stars 
of the first magnitude, above the political horizon 
of this state, I refer to Silas Wright and Wil- 
liam H. Seward. Each pointed the way in his 
own party, and as Moses led the Israelites out of 
Egypt, so these great leaders guided the true 
Democracy, each of his own party, towards the 
haven of Republicanism. 

The ethics of each were those of Jefferson and 
the Republican fathers, and each was equally op- 
posed to aristocracy, federalism and the ag- 
gressions of the slave power ; and the teachings 
of each, followed to their legitimate sequence, 
has brought into existence the Republican party. 
Each deemed humanity worth far more, for de- 
velopment and preservation, than for con- 
sumption and destruction. With both Wright 
and Seward man was deemed of far more 
worth than gold, and so each came in conflict 
with the monarchists and federalists of his 
party. 

Notwithstanding, the nomination of Wright 
alone saved the State of New York, and the 
election of Polk to the Democracy,- yet for his 
known and avowed Republican principles, he 
was doomed to destruction, by the aristocrats, 
nullifiers and slaveholders now in possession of 
the general government, the decree was sent 
forth and their servile tools were instructed to 
to ensure his defeat, and this was accomplished 
in the name of Democracy. " Oh 1 Democracy. 
What crimes are perpetrated in thy name ! " 

The star of Silas Wright set early, but unob- 
Bcured by the mists and fogs of modern Demo- 
cracy. 

Mr. Seward was doomed to an almost similar 
ordeal. After the death of Clay and Webster, 
he was left the leader of his party, and as he 
was the known and acknowledged representative 
of the true Democratic and free labor element in 
that party, the same means were employed to 
compass his destruction as was successful in the 
case of Wright. The administration of the ge- 
neral government was aiso^employed, directing, 
aiding, couns«ling and rewarding the assassins ; 
and this, too, by tliat administration which in- 
flicted the Fugitive Slave Law upon an insulted 
country ; which employed the army and navy of 
the United States in hunting and returning poor 
fugitives from slavery, and which surrounded 
with chains the court house in Boston to accom- 
plish the same unhallowed purpose. 

The causes and acts described culminated in 
the formation of the Republican party. 

The friends of Silas Wright, in the Democratic 
party, determined upon active, open opposition 
to the aristocracy and the slave power, and with 
the assistance of many Whigs holding the same 
opinions, assembled at Buffalo, in 1848, and in- 
augurated the movement, by the nomination of 
Martin "Van Bur en, and the adoption of the Buf- 
falo platform. This action produced the defeat 
of Cass, and the election of Taylor, in the me- 
morable conflict of that year. The death of 
Taylor took place soon after his entering upon 
the duties of ofB.ce, and was followed by the ad- 
ministration of Fillmore, which completed the 
demoralization of the Whig party. 

A portion of the Democratic free-soilers of 
'48, under the blandishments of Prince John, 
and th€ allurements of the flesh pots of the 



treasury, again went back to the latter-day De- 
mocracy. The intestine divisions, the quarrel- 
ling in the primary meetings, the broken heads 
in Tammany and the bludgeoning in state con- 
ventions, shows the old quarrel still open and 
going on as rampant as ever ; and thus will it 
continue, for be assured, old Federalism and the 
slave power, now governing the party, will never 
forgive you, that you da.red entertain independ- 
ent opinions, and say that JeflTerson and the 
lathers taught otherwise than the modern De- 
mocracy. Aye humble yourselves in the dust, 
crawl on your bellies and eat dirt all the rest of 
your lives, and yet you will not be forgiven,— 
The slave power is implacable, inexorable ; the 
fate of John A. Dix is held up in terrorem over 
your heads. 

Well may it be written over the portals of 
modern Democracy, as it was over the entrance 
of a certain other place, " Who enters here 
leaves hope behind." 

In 1.852, the Whig and Democratic parties 
entered upon the contest of that year, standing 
upon the same platform ; and, as might have 
been expected, the Whigs were defeated. The 
large capitalists and the slaveholders calculating 
rightly, that the latter-day Democracy were 
more reliable, more devoted to their interests ; 
and that the leaders of the Democracy in ihe 
northern states were as reckless in their pursuit 
of treasury pap and official i3lace, as the Dutch 
skipper was in the pursuit of trade, when he de-, 
clared, that " if he could make six pence by pass- 
ing through hell, he would run the risk of 
scorching his sails." 

This defeat crushed out the Whig party and 
resolved it into its primitive elements. That 
portion of it which held the views of Mr. Seward, 
who had ever stood steadily hy him in his de- 
fense of freedom and the rights of man, in short 
the republican and true democratic portion of 
the Whig party, joined the old free-soilers and 
radical democrats who were driven out of their 
party by the aggressions of Pierce, his open de- 
votion to slavery in all "its requirements and the 
insulting letter of his secretary, Cushing, that 
he intended to crush out free-soilism in the. 
northern States. 

These united in the formation of the republi- 
can party, congenial elements seeking their poli- 
tical affinities. 

Mr. Chairman, it was my good fortune to be 
present and to assist in the formation of this 
great and glorious party. It was a sight enno- 
bling to our common humanity to see men who 
had been warring against each other in hostile 
and conflicting political organizations for a life- 
time coming together and yielding up their pre- 
judices ; being satisfied that they had the same 
principles, the same love of freedom and the 
same hatred of oppression in common. 

But the crowning act was when the Whig con- 
vention, which was in session at the same time, 
came into the room where the free-soil demo- 
cratic convention was held, and there both 
parties, in a spirit of true devotion to freedom, 
offered up on the altar of their common country 
their party name and their party organization ; 
there never has been such a scene enacted in our 
country since the time when our revolutionary 
fathers^assembled and pledged their lives, their 
fortunes and their sacred honor in the cause of 
freedom. 



It was no common act of abnegation on the 
part of the Whig convention. They were tlie 
representatives of a great party, which, had liad 
its presidents and which even then held the 
political power of this great State in its hands ; 
it had its battle-fields, its victories, and its 
cherished party name to think of. But patriotism 
and true devotion to country demanded the 
sacrifice ; they never hesitated : they were equal 
to the high mission. All honor to them for the 
act. 

Well was it said at the time, " What God hath 
joined together let not man put asunder." 

This great party thus formed has gone on con- 
quering and to conquer, collecting within its 
ranks the intelligent, the honest, the fearless, 
the lover of freedom and of his race. 

Not only the "native to the manor born," but 
the man of foreign lineage who loves freedom 
and hates slavery here finds his appropriate 
place. 

But, sir, it may be asked what has become of 
the remainder of those who constituted the Whig 
party; I answer they have gone to their appointed 
place. It is a law governing the whole world 
that like not only begets like, but where there is 
freedom of motion allowed like also consorts 
with like. This is not only true of animate but 
also of inanimate nature. 

Thus you will find a portion of those who were 
Whigs, with the latter-day Democracy, and they 
iray generally be known by their boisterous pro- 
fessions of devotion and extreme subserviency to 
the slave power, and unmeasured abuse of Re- 
publicans and Republican principles. Witness the 
attack of Choate on the Declaration of Independ- 
ence. 

Another portion animated by the most vindic- 
tive personal hatred of Mr, Seward, originated 
the order of the dark lantern for his certain de- 
struction ; the fate of that renowned and mush- 
room like association has become a historical 
fact. At the last gathering at Binghamton they 



not equal in numbers th6 followers of John 
Brown in his mad raid on Harper's Ferry. 

The star of William H. Seward is in the ascend- 
ant and he is the representative man of his party ; 
around him cluster the brave and the free, the 
men of strong arms and stout hearts, and they 
will not consent that his claims shall be post- 
poned in favor of one whose pulses do not throb 
in unison with the great heart of freedom beat- 
ing in the bosom of the Republican party. 

I have thus endeavored to show the position 
of the two great parties of the country on the 
political questions of the time, with "nothing 
extenuate nor aught set down in malice." 

The moral and social aspects of the question 
and the deterioraLing effects of slavery on the 
dominant race, and the blight of all progressive 
tendenci s and of all industrial pursuits in that 
country where it prevails, have been most truth- 
fully and eloquently shown by the Hon. Senator 
from the 27th. 

As to the poetry furnished for the Democracy 
on this occasion by the Senator from the 9th, I 
can only say that it is worthy of the spirit in- 
spiring it. 

Can any man suppose that the sublime thoughts 
and noble language of Bryant, Whittier and other 
true poets when they sang the charms of nature, 
the Grod given rights of man, the eventual and 
sure success of virtue and freedom, could ever 
have been inspired by the spirit of slavery which 
pervades and actuates the latter day Democracy ; 
no, had slavery been the theme they would have 
sang in doggrel verse like the Senator from the 
9th. 

Bryant never could have given utterance to 
that noble thought, in language so befitting the 
sentiment : 

"Truth crushed to earth, will rise again, 
The eternal years of God are her's ; 

But error wounded, writhes in pain, 
And dies amid her worshipers." 



EVENING JOURNAL TRACTS, NO. 7. 

REPUBLICAN PRINCIPLES. 

SPEECH 



HOK ABEAHAM LIE"COLIT, 

OF* ILLINOIS, 

AT THE 

EEPUBLICAN STATE COl^YENTIOlSr, HELD AT SPEINGFIELD, 
ILLINOIS, JUKE 16, 1858, 



If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we 
could then better judge what to do, and hoiv to do it. 

We are now far into i\iQ ffth year, since a policy was initiated, with the 
avoived object and confident promise of putting an end to Slavery agitation. 

Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, 
but has constantly augmented. 

In mtj opinion, it will not cease, until a crisis shall have been reached 
and passed. " A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe 
this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do 
not expect the Union to be dissolved. I don't expect it will cease to be 
divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the 
cp-ponents of Slavery will arrest the future spread of it where the public 
mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction ; or 
its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all 
the states, old as well as neio — North as well as South, Have we no 
tendency to the latter condition ? 

Let any one who doubts, carefully contemplate that now almost com- 
plete legal combination^ — piece of machinery so to speak — compounded of 
the Nebraska doctrine, and the Dred Scott decision. Let him consider not 
only what worlc the machinery is adopted to do, and how well adopted ; but 
also, let him study the history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or 
rathery?/z7, if he can, to trace the evidences of design, and concert of action, 
among its chief bosses, from the beginning. Bat, so far, Congress only, had 
acted ; and an indorsement by the people, real or apparent, was indispen- 
sable, to save the point already gained, and give chance for more. The new 
year of 1854 found Slavery excluded from more than half the states by 
state constitutions, and from most of the national territory by congres- 
sional prohibition. Four days later commenced the struggle, which ended 
in repealing that congressional prohibition. 



This opened all the national territory to Slavery, and was the first point 
gained. This necessity had not been overlooked ; but had been provided 
for, as V7ell as might be, in the notable argument of " squatter sovereignty ^^^ 
otherwise called " sacred right of self-government^'''' which latter phrase, 
though expressive of the only rightful basis of any government, was so 
perverted in this attempted use of it, as to amount to just this : That if 
any one man choose to enslave another, no third man shall be allowed to 
object. That argument was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in 
the language which follows : ^' It heing the true intent and meaning of this act, 
not to legislate Slavery into any territory or state, nor exclude it thtrefrom ; hut 
to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic insti- 
tutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.''^ 
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of '* squatter sover- 
eignty," and " sacred right of self-government." 

"But," said Opposition members, "let us be more specific — let us 
amend the bill so as to expressly declare that the people of the territory 
Twa?/ exclude Slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and 
down they voted the amendment. While the Nebraska bill was passing 
through Congress, a law case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, 
by reason of his owner having, voluntarily, taken him, first, into a free 
state, and then a territory, covered by the congressional prohibition, and 
held him as a slave, for a long tune in each, was passing through the United 
States circuit court for the district of Missouri ; and both Nebraska bill and 
law suit were brought to a decision in the same month of May, 1854. 
The negro's name was " Dred Scott," which name now designates the 
decision finally made in the case. 

Before the then next presidential election, the law case came to, and was 
argued in the Supreme Court of the United States ; but the decision of it was 
deterred until after the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trum- 
bull, on the floor of the Senate, requests the leading advocate of the 
Nebraska bill to state his opinion, whether the people of a territory can 
constitutionally exclude Slavery from their limits, and the latter answers : 
"That is a question for the supreme court." The election came; Mr. 
Buchanan was elected, and the indorsement, such as it was, secured. That 
was the second point gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a 
clear, popular majority, by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, 
perhaps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The outgoing 
President, in his last annual message, as impressively as possible echoed back 
upon the people the weight and authority of the indorsement. 

The Supreme Court met again; they ^zcZ ?io^ announce their decision, but 
ordered a re-argument. The presidential inauguration came, and still no 
decision of the court ; but the incoming President, in his inaugural address, 
fervently exhorted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, what- 
ever it might be. Then in a few days came the decision. The reputed 
author of the Nebraska bill, finds an early occasion to make a speech at this 
Capitol, indorsing the Dred Scott decision, and vehemently denouncing all 
opposition to it. The new President, too, seizes the early occasion of the 
Stillman letter to indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express 
his astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained. 

At length a squabble springs up between the president and the author 
of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, whether the Lecompton 
Constitution was or was not in any just sense made by the people of 



Kansas ; and in that squabble, the latter declares that all he wants is a 
fair vote from the people, and that he cares not whether Slavery be voted 
down or voted ^/?. I do not understand this declaration, that he cares not 
whether Slavery be voted clown or voted up, to be intended by him other 
than as an ayt definition of the policy he would impress upon the public 
mind — the yrincifle for v/hich he declares he has suffered much, and is ready 
to suffer to the end. And well may he cling to that principle. If he has 
any parental feeling, well may he cling to it. That principle is the only 
shred left of his original Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott deci- 
sion "squatter sovereignty," squatted out of existence — tumbled down like 
temporary scaffolding; like the mold at the foundry, served through one 
blast and fell back into loose sand — helped to carry an election, and then 
was kicked to the winds. His late joint struggle with the Republicans, 
against the Lecompton Constitution, involves nothing of the original 
Nebraska doctrine. That struggle was made on a point — the right of the 
people to make their own constitution — upon which he and the Republicans 
have never diftered. 

The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection with Senator 
Douglas's "care not" policy, constitute the piece of machinery in its 
present state of advancement. The working points of that machinery are : 
First, that no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and no descendant 
of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any state, in the sense of that term 
as used in the Constitution of the United States. This point is made in 
order to deprive the negro, in every possible event, of the benefit of this 
provision of the United States Constitution, which declares " That the 
citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of 
citizens in the several states." 

Secondly, that " subject to the Constitution of the United States," 
neither Congress nor a territorial legislature can exclude Slavery from the 
United States territory. This point is made in order that individual men 
mQ,jJill u]? the territories with slaves, without danger of losing them as 
property, and thus to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution 
through all the future. 

Thirdly, that whether the holding a negro in actual Slavery, in a free 
state, makes him free, as against the holder, the United States courts will 
not decide, but will leave to be decided by the courts of any slave state the 
negro may be forced into by the master. 

This point is made, not to be pressed immediately ; but, if acquiesced in 
for a while, and apparently indorsed by the people at an election, the7i to 
sustain the logical conclusion, that what Dred Scott's master might lawfully 
do with Dred Scott in the free state of Illinois, every other master may 
lawfully do with other 07ie, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any other 
free state. Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the 
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold public 
opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care whether Slavery is 
voted down or wp. This shows exactly where we now are, and partially, 
also, whither we are tending. 

It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back and run the mind 
over the string of historical facts already stated. Several things will now 
appear less dark and mysterious than they did when they were transpiring. 
The people were to believe "perfectly freely," "subject only to the Con- 
stitution." What the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not 



then see. Plainly enough now^ it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred 
Scott decision to afterward come in,, and declare ihdit perfect freedom of the 
people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the amendment, expressly 
declaring the right of the people to exclude Slavery, voted down? Plainly 
enough now, an adoption of it would have spoiled the niche for the Dred 
Scott decision. Why was the court decision held up ? Why even a sena- 
tor's individual opinion withheld till after the presidential election ? Plainly 
enough 7101c, the speaking out then would have endangered the '•'' 'perfectly 
free^' argument upon which the question was to be carried. Why the 0?/^- 
going President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why the delay of a 
re-argument ? Why the incoming President's advance exhortation in favor 
of the decision ? These things looTc. like the cautious patting and petti7?g of a 
spirited horse, preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may 
give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after indorsements of the decision 
by the President and others ? We cannot absolutely hioiv that all these 
exact adaptations are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of 
framed timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten out 
at different times and places, and by different workmen — Stephen, Franklin, 
Roger and James, for instance — and when we see these timbers joined 
together, and see they exactly make the frame of a house or a mill, all the 
tenons and mortices exactly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of 
the different pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a 
piece too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a single 
piece be lacking, we can see the place in the frame exactly fitted and pre- 
pared to yet bring this piece in — in siich a case we find it impossible to not 
believe that Stephen and Franklin and Roger and James all understood one 
another from the beginning, and all worked upon a common ylan or draft 
drawn up before the first lick was stinck. 

It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the people of a 
state SiS well as territory, were to be left ^^ perfecdy^^ free, ''^ subject only to 
the Constit'ution.^^ Why mention a sta,te ? They were legislating for terri- 
tories, and not for or about states. Certainly the people of a state are and 
oiLght to 6e subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is 
mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law ? Why are the 
people of a territory and the people of a state^ therein lumiied together, and 
their relation to the Constitution therein treated as hemg precisely the same? 
While the opinion of the court, by Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott 
case, and the separate opinions of the concurring judges, expressly declare 
that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Congress nor a 
territorial legislature to exclude Slavery from any United States territory, 
they all omit to declare whether or not the same Constitution permits a 
state, or the people of a state, to exclude it. 

Possibly, this was a mere omission ; but who can be quite sure, if McLean 
or Curtis had sought to get into the opinion a declaration of unlimited 
power in the people of a state to exclude Slavery fi'om their limits, just as 
Chase ^nd Mace sought to get such declaration in behalf of the people 
of a territory, into the Nebraska bill — I ask who can be quite sure that it 
would not have been voted down in one case as it had been in the other. 
The nearest approach to the point of declaring the power of a state over 
Slavery is made by Judge Nelson. He approaches it more than once, using 
the precise idea and almost the language too of the Nebraska act. On one 
occasion his exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is 



restrained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the state is 
supreme over the subject of Slavery within its jurisdiction." 

In what cases the power of the states is so restrained by the United States 
Constitution, is left an open question, precisely as the same question as to 
the restraint on the power of the territories was left open in the Nebraska 
act. Put that and that together, and we have another nice little niche, 
which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, 
declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a state 
to exclude Slavery from its limits. And this may especially be expected 
if the doctrine of " care not whether Slavery be voted doivn or voted z^p," 
shall gain upon the public mind sufficiently to give promise that such a 
decision can be maintained when made. Such a decision is all that Slavery 
now lacks of being alike lawful in all the states. Welcome, or unwelcome, 
such a decision is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the 
power of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. We 
shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the 
verge of making their state /ree; and we shall awake to the reality^ instead, 
that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state. 

To meet and overthrow the power of that dynasty is thework now 
before all those who would prevent that consummation. That is what v/e 
have to do. But how can we best do it. 

There are those who denounce us ojjenly to their own friends, and yet 
v/hisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the ainest instrument there ib, with 
which to effect that object. They do not tell us, nor has he told us, that 
he wishes any such object to be effected. They wish us to i7}fer all, from the 
facts, that he now has a little quarrel with the head of the present dynasty ; 
and that he has regularly voted with us, on a single point, upon which he 
and we have never differed. They remind us that he is a very great man, 
and that the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But 
" a living dogi^ better than a dead lion.^^ Judge Douglas, if not a dead lion 
for this work, is at least a caged and toothless one. How can he oppose the 
advance of Slavery? He don't care any thing about it. His avowed 
mission is imp-essing the " public heart" to care nothing about it. 

A leading Douglas Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior 
talent will be needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. 
Does Douglas believe an eftbrt to revive that trade is approaching? He 
has not said so. Does he really think so ? But if it is how can he resist 
it? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred right of white men to take 
negro slaves into the new territories. Can he possibly show that it is less 
a sacred right to buy them where they can be bought cheapest ? And 
unquestionably they can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He 
has done all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one 
of a mere right of property ; and as such, how can he oppose the foreign 
slave-trade — how can he refuse that "property" shall be "perfectly free" 
unless he does it as a protection to the home production ? And as the home 
producf-rs will probably not ask the protection he will be wholly without a 
ground of opposition. 

Senator Douglas holds, we knov/, that a man may rightfully be wiser to-day 
than he was yesterday, that he may rightfully change when he finds himself 
wrong. But, can we for that reason run ahead and iifer that he will make 
any particular change, of which he himself has given no intimation? Can 
we safely base our action upon any such vague inference ? Now, as ever, 



I wish to not misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, question his motives, or 
do aught that can be personally offensive to him. Whenever, if ever, he 
and we can come together on principle, so that our grsctt cause may have 
assistance from his great ahilitij, I hoped to have interposed no adventitious 
obstacle. But clearly he is not now with us — he does not pretend to be — 
he does not promise to ever be. Our cause, then, must be intrusted to and 
conducted by its own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, 
whose hearts are in the work, who do care for the result. 

Two years ago, the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen 
hundred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of resist- 
ance to a common danger, and with every external circumstance against us. 
0^ strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four 
winds ^ndi formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire 
of a disciplined, proud and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then to 
falter now? — now — when that same enemy is ivavering, dissevered and 
belligerent? The result is not doubtful. We shall not fail; if we stand 
firm, we shall not fail. Wise councils may accelerate or mistakes delay it, 
but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come. 



EVENING JOUSNAL TRACTS, NO. 8. 

REPUBLICAN NOMINATIONS. 

SPEECH 

OF 

CA_RL SCHXJR2:, 

AT THE 

MILWAUKEE KATIFICATION MEETING, 

ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 30, 1860. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : 

As one of the delegates who had the honor to represent the Republicans 
of Wisconsin in the National Convention, I feel called upon to give you a 
brief account of our doings and of the views which guided us in our course. 
We have faithfully endeavored to do our dut}^ as we understood it, and I 
am bold enough to assume that our understanding of it did not differ from 
yours. 

We went there not only for the pui-pose of subserving the interests of 
the party, but above all of promoting the interests of our cause. - 

The question to be solved at Chicago, as we understood it, was not only 
how we could beat the Democracy, but whether a defeat of the Democracy 
would be a victory of Republicanism. We do not forget that there are 
triumphs which are no victories, and that such triumphs, dangerous and 
treacherous as they always will be, may become even worse than defeats ; 
for, being the triumphs of politicians instead of the cause, they will loosen 
the moral bonds which hold a party together, and substitute in their place 
the mere cohesive power of public plunder. 

We are well aware, that for some time previous to the meeting of the 
National Convention, in some Republican newspapers, in speeches and pri- 
vate circulars, an extreme tenderness was shown for the prejudices and sus- 
ceptibilities of those, who had never acted with us, while much less regard 
was paid to the feelings and preferences of the Republican masses. We 
expected to see this policy urged upon the National Convention, and we 
were determined to present to it a bold and unflinching opposition. For, 
we thought we appreciated the true element of our strength. We knew 
that mere drill and discipline, and party dictation would never drive the Re- 
publican masses into silent obedience to the mandates of that convention, if 
those mandates run contrary to the popular conscience. We kept in mind 
that the Republican party had sprung from the indignation of the people 



aroused by a flagrant breach of trust, and had gained its strength by 
the uprising of the popular heart for great positive ideas; that it is a party 
of volunteers held together not by drill and command, but by the moral 
pov^^er of a great common cause, that by joining the Republican organiza- 
tion, not one of us gave up his moral and political independence; that we 
did not deed av^ay our conscience in inscribing our names upon its roll ; 
that its claims on our support depend on the hold it has on our convictions ; 
that its tenure is on good behavior, and that it cannot and shall not be ruled 
by the wily arms of secret diplomacy. 

I have heard it said that in consequence of all this, the Republican party 
is a very difficult party to be managed — but nothing in the world can be 
easier, as long as the simple but great truth is kept in view, that the masses 
will remain true to the Republican party, as long as the Republican party 
remains true to itself. It was our conviction, that if the Convention had 
fallen into the fatal error of attempting to change the faith and policy of 
the party, as we would change our dress, it would quickly have found out 
that the Republican party is essentially the party of independent men, that 
its power rests upon public opinion, and that it can do no wrong with im- 
punity. 

With these ideas uppermost in our minds, we went into that Convention, 
determined to preserve in its purity the original idea upon which the party 
was founded ; determined never to sell out the moral character and the 
great future of the Republican cause for the treacherous glitter of plausible 
combinations, brought about by trade and compromise, determined rather to 
risk a defeat than to lose our own identity in the chase after a delusive 
phantom of party success; in one word, determined to have a Republican 
platform, and upon it a Republican candidate. I leave it to the people of 
Wisconsin to decide whether they were misrepresented by their delegates. 

By the partiality of our delegation, I was placed upon the committee on 
platforms and resolutions. The spirit which animated that committee was 
that the standard of Republicanism should not be lowered one single inch. 
We endeavored to lift the creed of the party far above the level of mere 
oppositional policy. The platform gives it a positive character. The Repub- 
licans stand before the country, not only as the Anti-slavery party, but em- 
phatically as the party of free labor. While penning up slave labor within 
the limits which the legislation of sovereign states has assigned to it, we 
propose to plant free labor in the territories by the Homestead bill, and to 
promote free labor all over the land by the encouragement of home indus- 
try. In throwing its shield over the eternal principles of human rights, the 
platform presents the Anti-slavery policy of the party in its logical connec- 
tion with the great material interests of the country. *' To man, his birth- 
right ; to labor, freedom ; to him that wants to labor, work and in inde- 
pendence ; to him that works, his dues." This is the Republican platform. 

It affords me special satisfaction to state, that the resolutions, the passage 
•of which was recommended by the Republican State Convention of Wis- 
consin — I mean those concerning the Homestead bill, and the rights of 
naturalized citizens, were successfully advocated, and form part of our na- 
tional creed. 

Our platform, adopted without opposition and almost without discussion, 
adopted amidst the most spontaneous and sublime outbursts of enthysi.asm 
human eye ever witnessed, is before the people. It is the boldest, plainest., 
the most liberal ever presented to the motion by a political party, and the 



enthusiastic shotits of millions from Maine to the Rocky Mountains, have 
already sanctioned it with their approval. 

Mr. President, the delegates of this state were instructed to cast their 
votes for the nomination of William H. Seward. It was certainly not for 
reasons of availability that Mr. Seward's name was brought forward. But 
we were accustomed to look up to him as the intellectual head of the politi- 
cal anti-Slavery movement. From him we received the battle-cry in the 
turmoils of the contest ; for he was one of those bold spirits who some- 
times will go ahead of public opinion, instead of tamely following its foot- 
prints. He would compress into a single sentence — a single word — the 
whole issue of a controversy ; and those words became the inscriptions 
on our banners, the pass-words of our combatants. His cojjiprehensive intel- 
lect possesses the peculiar power of penetrating into the infetkw* connection, 
and grasping the general tendency of events and ideas, things and abstrac- 
tions ; he charms our minds with panoramic views of our political and 
social condition, and the problems to be solved ; his telescopic eye seems to 
pierce even the veil which covers future developments ; and while all his 
acts and words are marked, by a thorough-going and uncompromising con- 
sistency, they are at the same time adorned with the peculiar graces of 
superior mental culture. 

The same qualities which made him the object of the fiercest and most 
acrimonious hostility on the part of our opponents, could not fail to assign 
to him, in the hearts of his friends, a place which hardly another man in 
the nation could fill. But a popularity like this, is not apt to become gen- 
eral. He was one of the earliest champions of our cause. He fought 
for it, sometimes single-handed and alone, standing firm and unmoved in the 
storm of fanaticism and vituperation. He fought for it when he was 
unpopular, and all the prejudice that existed against his principles, all the 
odium that was cast upon his doctrine, centered upon his person. He was 
the bugbear with which political children were frightened, and a great many 
were accustomed to couple with the name of Seward all that w^as detestable 
and dangerous. His principles emerged from that cloud of prejudice, but 
his name did not, and although a daily increasing number of friends gath- 
ered around him, yet a great many could not divest themselves of their early 
impressions. 

And so this became one of the instances, which you so frequently meet 
with in the history of mankind, that individuals have to pay a tribute of 
self-denial to their own greatness. The success of the cause they serve is 
apt to bring with it the disappointment of their personal aspirations. This 
is a melancholy fate, but it is no less glorious and sublime, for even the 
highest positive merit may receive a still higher lustre fcom the divine appoint- 
ment of self-sacrifice. History does not judge men by the outward emblems 
of power and preferment. The greatest names are those who need no title 
in order to be great. Seward has lost nothing in the Convention. He is 
to-day what he was yesterday. He can hardly stand higher; he certainly 
does not stand lower. 

We, the delegates from Wisconsin, voted for him to the last. I may say 
that a few hours after my arrival at Chicago I saw that Seward's nomina- 
tion was very improbable. I do, not lay claim to any particular sagacity 
and foresight for that, for it was a plain arithmetical problem. The causes 
which brought about his defeat I will not detail ; suflfice it to say, that they 
were not of a futile nature. But we stood by him, determined to carry his 



name as high as possible. Nor did we follow the example of those who 
changed their votes after the decisive ballot, before the final result was 
announced ; not as though we had been opposed to Mr. Lincoln, than whom 
there is no truer man in the nation, but because we thought we owed it 
to our old chiefta.i, that, if fail we must, he should withdraw with the 
honors of war, surrounded by an unbroken column of true and devoted 
friends. So New York, Wisconsin, Michigan and some delegates from other 
States, stood together to the last. Thus was this debt of honor dis- 
charged ; we considered it honestly due, and it was honestly paid. 

I need hardly, say, sir, that when the motion was made to make Mr. 
Lincohi's nomination unanimous, we seconded it without any sacrifice of 
feeling, and when it was carried, we heartily joined in the general enthu- 
s'asm. We had not gone there, to have our candidate nominated or none ; 
but with the royal intention to subordinate our individual judgment to the 
judgment of the majority, provided the convention asked of us nothing incon- 
sistent with our consciences as anti-Slavery men, and the dignity of the Repub- 
lican cause. And I do not hesitate to say, that if Gov. Seward had not been 
in the field, Mr. Lincoln would, unless I mistake the temper of our people, 
in all probability, have been the first choice of Wisconsin. . Although Gov. 
Seward failed, Mr. Lincoln's nomination nailed the good old Republican 
banner to the mast as boldly and definantly as ever. 

Mr. President, I had the honor to be a member of that committee who 
were to carry to Mr. Lincoln the official announcement of his nomination. 
The enthusiasm with which we were received at Springfield was boundless. 
There we saw Mr. Lincoln's neighbors, and it became at once apparent that 
those who knew him best, loved and esteemed him most. And then I saw 
Mr. Lincoln again, for I had met him before in that memorable senatorial 
campaign in Illinois, when he, as a man of true and profound convictions, 
although discountenanced and discouraged by many leading Republicans, 
who thought it good policy to let Mr. Douglas return to the Senate without 
opposition, threw himself forward for the imperiled purity of our principles, 
grasped with a bold hand the Republican banner, which was in danger of 
sinking into the mire of compromise and unnatural combinations, and held 
it up proudly aloft in one of the fiercest struggles the country ever wit- 
nessed. I met him then, in the thick of the fight, when he bearded the 
lion of demagogism in his den, when the brilliant sallies of his wit and 
sarcasm drew shouts of delight from the multitude, when the thunderbolts 
of his invective rattled triumphantly against the brazen front of Stephen A. 
Douglas, when the lucid, unanswerable logic of his arguments inspired every 
patriotic heart with new confidence in the justice of our cause, and when 
under his powerful blows the large Democratic majority of Illinois dwindled 
down to nothing. There I saw him do what perhaps no other man in the 
nation would have done. There I learned to confide in the patriot and the 
defender of profound convictions, to esteem the statesman and to love the 
man. 

And, now, I saw him again, surrounded by the committee of the national 
convention who had come to lay in his hands the highest honor and the 
greatest trust which a political party has to bestow — an honor which he 
had not thought of in his hard fought battles, which he had not craved and 
had hardly been sanguine enough to expect. There he stood silently listen- 
ing to the address of our chairman ; his eyes downcast; in his soul, perhaps, 
a feeling of just pride struggling with the overawing consciousness of respon- 



sibility. Then he answered, thanking them for the honors bestowed upon 
him and accepting the leadership in the great struggle, not with the exulting 
tone of one who has achieved a personal triumph ; not with the pompous 
airs and artificial dignity of one who is conscious of standing upon the great 
stage of the world, but with that unaffected modest simplicity of a man who 
is strong in the consciousness of his ability and his honest intention to do right. 

Many of those who now surrounded him had voted for other candidates in 
the convention, and sonfie, still laboring under a feeling of personal disap- 
pointment, had come there not without some prejudice unfavorable to Mr. 
Lincoln. But when they saw a man who had worked his way from the 
humblest station in life to his present eminence, not by fast speculations or 
adventurous efforts, not on the wing of good luck, but by quiet, steady labor, 
unswerving fidelity to principle and his private and public duties, by the 
vigor of his genius and the energy of his character — the man who had won 
the confidence of the people and was now lifted upon the shield of a great 
national party, not by ingenious combinations and adroit management, but 
by the popular instinct — unfettered by promises, unpledged to anybody and 
anything but the people and the welfare of our countiy, his hands free to 
carry out the honest dictates of his pure conscience, a life behind him, not 
only above reproach, but above suspicion, a problem before him, for the 
solution of which he was eminently fitted by the native virtues of his charac- 
ter, the high abilities of his mind, and a strong honest purpose, then they all 
felt, with this pure and patriotic statesman, all those great qualities would 
return to the white house, which makes republican government what it ought 
to be — a government founded upon virtue. And an Eastern delegate, who 
had voted against him in the convention, w;hispered to me in a tone of the 
highest satisfaction : " Sir, we might have done a more daring thing, but 
we certainly could not have done a better thing." 

I cannot find words strong enough to designate the silliness of those who 
sneeringly affected to see in Mr. Lincoln but a second or third rate man, who, 
like Polk and Pierce, had been taken up merely for the purpose of expedi- 
ency. Let them ask Mr. Douglas, from whose hands he wrested the popular 
majority in Illinois ; let them ask those, who once felt the magic touch of 
his lucid mind and honest heart; let his detractors ask their own secret mis- 
givings, andin their own fears they willrea-d the cause of the joy and assur 
ance of his friends. They whistle in order to keep up their courage ; but, 
methinks it is a doleful sound. So, then, we stand before the people, with 
the platform of free labor, and upon it a true representative of free labor, as 
a candidate for the presidency. On this attitude we challenge our enemies 
to the battle. 

On our flank we are threatened by the Constitutional Union — nonde- 
script; by that party of dry hearts and dead weights, who recently assem- 
bled at Baltimore, and, conscious of their inability to make a platform, 
adopted a sentence from a fourth of July oration as their common creed, 
and will in all probability circulate Mr. Everett's Mount Vernon papers as 
their principal campaign documents. They know no north, no south, no 
east, no west, no anything, and least of all they know themselves. See 
them march on, ready to charge, gently and witli forbearance, lest they step 
upon somebody's toes, and slowly and noiselessly, lest their own soldiers, 
frightened by their own impetuosity, suspect themselves of sinister designs — 
for theirs is an army which by the accidental explosion of a percussion cap 
might be thrown into the most frii^htful disorder. It is said that one oi 



6 

their candidates contemplates declining the nomination. Let him well pon- 
der what he is doing* Let him not, with his accustomed rashness in political 
matters, skip over so awful a responsibility ; upon his resolution so or so may 
depend a ditFerenee of five or ten votes at the next national election. 

In front we face the Democracy. Thanks to the restless impatience of 
Mr. Douglas's ambition, and to his unscrupulous duplicity, the Democratic 
party is fast falling to pieces. Indeed we are greatly indebted to that man. 
When, by the Nebraska bill, and the invention of the popular sovereignty 
dodge, he tried to gain the favor of the south, he helped build up the Repub- 
lican party in the north ; and when by refusing to acknowledge the logical 
consequences of his own ])osition, he tried to retrieve his fortunes at the 
north, he disorganized the Democratic party at the south. And even lately 
he demonstrated the existence of the irrepressible conflict more clearly and 
forcibly, with due deference to Gov. Seward be it said, than ten Rochester 
speeches could have done. He is like the fellow who, in order to get at 
the apples that hung rather high, cut down the tree. Yes, that man has 
done much of our work, and he did it voluntarily, gratis, for nothing. Let 
us be honest enough to confess it; for, sir, I really do not see why the 
church should refuse to acknowledge its obligations to the devil. 

It is not owing to his laudable exertions that the Democracy have opened 
the campaign with two platforms and nary candidate ? In fact, when taking 
all his kind services into consideration, I am almost sorry of ever having said 
anything against that man. But the thing is done, and Mr. Douglas must 
be satisfied with as humble an apology as I am able to offer. 

The first attempt of the Democracy to unite upon a platform and to 
nominate a candidate failed. It*could not but fail so long as some of them 
insisted on laying down a party creed that meant something. A Democratic 
platform, in order to be satisfactory, must mean nothing and everything, as 
the Cincinnati platform did. But they will try again to repress the irre- 
pressible conflict which rages in their own ranks, and as the day for doing 
so they have with great propriety chosen the 18th of June, the anniversary 
of the battle of Waterloo. What the result of that Convention will be, 
whether one of the contesting factions will carry the day, or whether they 
will succeed in uniting them, by conceding to one the platform, and to the 
other the candidates, thus cheating each other in attempting to cheat the 
people, is to me a matter of supreme indifference. The Democrats un- 
doubtedly thought they had done a very smart thing in adjourning their 
Convention without nominating a candidate, so as to deprive us of the 
supposed advantage of knowing what antagonist we had to deal with. 
Without being aware of it, they have indeed done a great thing for us ; for 
they have obliged us to rely for success upon the positive strength of our 
cause, instead of the accidental weakness of an opposite candidate. And 
in this noble and manly attitude we stand before them the only united 
National party in the land. 

While the Union-savers did not dare to lay down a common party creed 
— while the Democrats, with unscrupulous duplicity, attempt to commit a 
new fiaud upon the people — the Republican party has, with manly fearless- 
ness, proclaimed its principles and nominated a candidate who fairly and 
honestly represents them. We have undertaken to defeat our opponents, 
not by concession and subterfuge, but by boldly and unequivocally re- 
asserting the principles in which we believe. We have undertaken to 
disarm the prejudices that are against us, not by pandering to them, but by 



opposing to them the language of truth. No greediness of a speedy party 
triumph has betrayed us into the abandonment of a single position ; no desire 
to conclude advantageous aUiances has betrayed us into a single compromise. 
I am proud to say we have disdained to purchase, at the price of a single*^ 
article of our creed, the support of that small set of amphibious politicians j 
who claim to hold the balance of power, and whose office it seems to have / 
been, for years^ to demoralize parties with their treacherous promises of 
support; of those heartless men who, when a whole continent is on fire, 
calculate with bloodless coolness from what side they can draw the greatest 
advantage. 

They may feel big with the vain boast that they will be strong enough to 
defeat us— we have shown them unequivocally enough, that they will never 
be strong enough to corrupt us. We have, indeed, invited the support of 
all citizens, whatever their party affiliations may have been. But we will 
not gain it by false pretences. We will speak to them the language of great 
principles, we will appeal to their sense of right and justice, we will assault 
their understandings with irrefutable arguments, we will storm their hearts 
with solemn invocations, but we have disdained to descend to ambiguous 
tricks, which would make us unworthy of being supported by others. 

Such is the Republican party of to-day. It is strong, for it seeks an 4 
finds its strength in the greatness of the cause it defends. It will be victo- 
rious, for it deserves success. Its success will be a decisive triumph of our 
cause, and if the worst should come, even a defeat would be a mere delay 
of certain victory. ^And so we are ready to give battle, armed with that 
scrupulous jealousy of principle, that will make us rather perish than com- 
promise the right; with that honest pride of conviction which springs from 
a deep consciousness of good faith and a true devotion to a just cause. 
And the signs of the times show that even in politics honesty is the best 
policy, for all honest men who mean to do right, although they formerly 
stood against us, are fast flocking around our banner. Listen to me a single 
moment. Standing as we do on the threshold of great decisions, I cannot 
suflTer my mind to be engaged in the walls of this house, or in the narrow 
lines of party interest and party policy, not even in the boundaries of this 
country. There is the wide world around us with its manifold races of 
nations and men, all of them for thousands of years engaged in the arduous 
struggle for happiness and freedom, now advancing with spasmodic force 
and rapidity, now falling back again exhausted and discouraged ; always 
struggling to disentangle their feet from the treacherous coils of despotic 
rule, and always baffled in their efforts ; so much noble blood spilled, so 
many noble hearts broken, so many noble aspirations turned into despair ! 

And in this world of strife and anguish there arose this Republic, a 
world of promise. It was the gospel of liberty translated into fact. It 
was to be the beacon of humanity. But alas ! the oblivion of despotic 
rule did not work the abolition of the baser passions of human nature. 
But half a century elapsed and this free government is ruled by a despotic 
interest, the Republic sinks into the mire of Slavery and corruption, sinks 
deeper and deeper, and the hope of humanity sinks with it. The advocates 
of despotism predict its downfall from day to day, and proclaim with 
exultation that the great experiment of human self-government has failed. 
It is in vain that the best men of the nation, like the prophets of old, rise 
up against the growing demoralization. They are sneered at and perse- 
cuted, or, at best, their efforts remain isolated and apparently fruitless. 



8 

Suddenly a great startling outrage is perpetrated ; the slave power, with its 
train of corruption and demoralization, shows itself in its naked deformity, 
and threatens to swallow down the whole future of the country in one gulp. 

Now the popular conscience wakes up. The people of the North rise to 
a last great effort. The first attempt to rescue the development of the 
Republic from the grasp of that despotic power fails, but the movement 
grows in dimensions and intensity. We press on and on, and the day of 
deliverance is at hand. Oh, it comes at last ! How we have longed to see 
it ! How we counted every minute by the impatient throbbings of our 
hearts ! We rally in formidable array ; every fiber of our being trembles 
with eagerness for the greatest of struggles ; every pulsation of our blood 
beats the charge ! We place one of the purest, noblest and ablest men 
of the nation at the head of our army — victory is within our grasp ! 

No man in whose soul glows a spark of sympathy with struggling 
humanity, can now stand idle. No heart that was ever fired by the divine 
breath of liberty, can now remain cold. 

Let Wisconsin stretch her hand across the great lakes and grasp that of 
New York. Let it be known that New York and Wisconsin, who stood 
together to the last for Seward in the Convention, will be the first and fore- 
most in the battle for Lincoln and Liberty ! 



EVENING JOURNAL TRACTS.-No. 9. 



Peopeety m THE Teeeitoeies. 



SPEECH 



HON. BENJAim F. WADE, 



OF OHIO, 



Deliyered in the Senate of the United States, March 7) 1860. 



The Senate resumed the consideration of the 
following resolutions, submitted by Mr. Brown 
on the 18th of January : 

^^ Hesolved, That the Territories are the common 
property of all the States, and that it is the privilege 
vf tne citizens of all the States to go into the Territo- 
ries with every kind or description of property recog- 
nized by the Constitution of the United States, and 
held under the laws of any of the States ; and that it is 
the constitutional duty of the law-making power, 
wherever lodged, or by whomsoever exercised, whether 
by the Congress or the Territorial Legislature, to enact 
such laws as may be found necessary for the adequate 
and sufficient protection of such property. 

'■' Eesolved, That the Committee on Territories be in- 
structed to insert, in any bill they may report for the 
organization of new Territories, a clause declaring it 
to be the duty of the Territorial Legislature to enact 
adequate and sufficient laws for the protection of all 
lands of property, as above described, within the limits 
of the Territory ; and that, upon its failure or refusal 
to do so, it is the admitted duty of Congress to inter- 
pose and pass stich laws." 

The pending question was on the amendment 
offered by Mr. Wilkinson, to strike out all after 
the word " resolved," where it first occurs, and 
insert : 

" That the Territories are the common property of 
the people of the United States ; that Congress has full 
power and authority to pass all laws necessary and 
proper for the government of such Territories ; and 
that, in the exercise of such power, it is the duty of 
Congress so to legislate in relation to slavery therein 
that the interests of free labor may be encouraged and 
protected in such Territories. 

^^ Eesolved, That the Committee on Territories be in- 
structed to insert, in any bill they may report for the 
organization of new Territories, a clause declaring that 
there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude 
in such Territories, except in punishment for crime 
whereof the party has been duly convicted." 

Mr. WADE. Mr. President, these resolu- 
tions bring up at once before the Senate two 
distinct and opposite systems of labor and civi- 
lization. The resolutions which are proposed 



by the Democratic portion of the Senate de- 
clare in favor of that one of those two systems 
which, in my judgment, is subversive of the 
melioration and progress of human society on 
this continent. The pubhc mind, North, South, 
East and West, is intensely engaged in making 
its choice between that system and the scheme 
of civilization which is asserted by the resolu- 
tions submitted by the EepubUcan side of the 
Chamber. I cannot, therefore, exaggerate the 
importance of this debate. It is a very ex- 
traordinary thing, Mr. President, that the loud- 
est complaints of maladministration of this 
Grovernment, and the noisiest alarms of immi- 
nent danger to the country, come from those 
who, for a very considerable period, have had 
possession of its vast revenues, control of its 
mighty power, influent^e of its agents and ch- 
ents, equally at the capital and in every nook 
and corner of the land, and so have formed and 
directed its poHcy, without encountering any 
effective resistance or opposition. The Eepub- 
Ucan party has been always, as it is now, ab- 
solutely powerless to impress its principles on 
the administration of the G-overnment. It 
stands by and looks on, wondering at the pro- 
gress of Democratic administration ; and won- 
dering, most of all, at hearing those who have 
conducted it entirely in their own way now 
threatening to pull down the pillars of the 
Union, and involve them all, with themselves^ 



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2 



in a common ruin. In the name of God, Mr. 
President, what does all this mean ? There is 
but one explanation of facts so strange and 
anomalous ; and that explanation is, that you 
still want to continue the administration, when 
you have found out that you cannot administer 
successfully, or even with safety, for your own 
system. 

Mr. President, if there is a Senator here who 
Ynll gainsay me in my next preliminary observ- 
ation, let him now look me full in the face and 
deny, if he can, that his section has had its full 
share of political power in this country, from 
the hour when the Government was organized 
until the exact moment when I am speaking. 
More than this, your power in the Government 
has been altogether disproportioned to your 
numbers. I blame nobody for this, because I 
know that it is human nature to use all the pow- 
er we have for the advancement of our own 
principles, our interests, and our accepted poli- 
cies. Undoubtedly, under similar circumstan- 
ces, we of the North would do the same ; 
therefore I do not complain, but simply state 
the fact. 

If, now, the present course of administration 
of the Government has so far proved a failure 
that you are now prepared to pull it down over 
our heads, pray tell us who is to blame but 
yourselves ? Sir, it is very manifest, from the 
confessions of the complainants, that they have 
no present or real cause of complaint. The 
secret really is, that uprising political principles, 
which they are no longer able to keep down, 
cast a shadow across their path which disturbs 
their equanimity. 

The Senator from Georgia [Mr. Toombs] told 
us that the South is in possession of eight hun- 
dred and fifty thousand square miles of coun- 
try, the most genial and beautiful that God ever 
bestowed upon men. He said that he was 
proud of it; and he has a right to be. He 
said that this fine region is capable of sustain- 
ing a population greater than that of all Europe. 
I beheve that he spoke within bounds. He 
told us that that region has twelve million peo- 
ple; mark you, sir, only twelve million. But 
we all know that the area of the slaveholding 
States is greater by about one-third than that 
of the free States ; while its population is at 
least one-third less. He spoke glowingly of 
the prosperity of the slaveholding States. What, 
then, could be more unreasonable and absurd 
than these winnings and complaints of North- 



ern aggressions and oppressions by the grea* 
and prosperous South, when the North is en- 
tirely out of power ? If he speaks relatively, 
then he speaks correctly. Property in slaves 
was never so prosperous as to-day. Look into 
the slave market; you will find that slaves 
never brought higher prices than now. Of 
course, slave labor is more profitable to the 
owner now than it has ever been. Sir, these 
Southern gentlemen are inconsistent and con- 
tradictory ; in one breath they are all boast and 
glory, in the next it is all despair and destruc- 
tion. Please reconcile some of these contra- 
dictions. 

If the North has, by means of its under- 
ground railroads, fatally and treacherously sap- 
ped and undermined the foundations of your 
whole system of labor, how is it that your pro- 
perty has risen in value, and your prosperity 
culminated, during all the time it has been go- 
ing on ? 

One other prehminary remark, Mr. Presi- 
dent. The Senator firom Georgia rose here in 
liis place, with a solemnity unusual for him, and 
with a countenance which was the very per- 
sonation of despair, and announced to an as- 
tonished people that we, the Senators on this 
side of the chamber, are the enemies of his 
country. Yes, sir ; he felt that we are enemies 
of his country, and therefore that power would 
be unsafely and dangerously lodged in our 
hands. Why, sir, would it be unsafe and dan- 
gerous ? Certainly they have suffered no da- 
mage from us, so far. He argues after this 
fashion : he complains that we have been faith- 
less in the execution of his fugitive law, and 
therefore the slave property of the South is in- 
secure ; but you will remember, sir, that, long 
before he got through with his speech, the 
slaves in Georgia were so loyal to their masters 
that, fi-om the days of the revolutionary war 
to the present time, not one hundred of all 
their black generations have fled from bondage. 
Sir, if there are those whose nature is so grate- 
ful that they can thank you for nothing, there 
are others whose nature is so discontented that 
they will complain upon very trifling cause. 
Only one poor negro a year, in eighty years, 
has escaped from the great State of Georgia ; 
and yet he trembles with rage, declares war, 
and lays hold upon the pillars of the Union. 
One poor negro a year, and even that negro 
not certainly lost through the Abolitionists or 
the aggressions of the North. The Senator 



3 



does not condescend to tell us how any or all 
the hundred have been spirited away ; but is 
content with boasting that aU who have been 
lost, from all causes whatever, do not exceed a 
hundred. 

Mr. President, when gentlemen come here 
and volunteer such arguments as these, it is 
perfectly evident that there is some motive 
stronger than any consciousness of injury re- 
ceived at the hands of those they accuse. The 
Senator from G-eorgia [Mr. Toombs] seems to 
have been specially assigned to act as attorney- 
general ; and he has brought in a bill of indict- 
ment, charging upon the Senators on this side 
of the chamber pretty much all the crimes 
known in the calendar. It is an indictment 
interspersed with something of argument, more 
of declamation, and yet more of vituperation. 
Now, sir^ I acknowledge him to be well and 
worthily assigned to this duty, for he is one of 
the ablest and most experienced members of 
the Senate. If a case could be made out at all 
against the North, he is just the man to make 
it out. I have already conceded his abihty. 
All who heard his speech will admit that he 
does not lack the necessary zeal. If he has 
failed, he may say, with another noted charac- 
ter, that he '* fell where Satan could not stand." 
[Laughter.] Sir, he has failed — utterly, totally 
failed, I pass by, for the moment, the im- 
peachments of treason and perjury, to reach 
another, namely, an impeachment of cowardice 
— an impeachment which I confess grated more 
harshly on my ear than all the other vitupera- 
tions in which he indulged. 

The Senator from G-eorgia said that we, the 
Eepublican Senators here, "and the untold 
milhons we represent, have fallen so low, that 
we have not only lost our virtue, but with it 
we have lost our courage, so that we have not 
the spirit to resent an injury." Did the Sena- 
tor believe the declaration which he made? 
If he did believe it, and I have no doubt he 
did, from the tenor of his language, he believed 
that on this side of the chamber we were all 
non-combatants. I will not suppose that he 
intended to earn a cheap reputation for valor 
by insulting those Avhom he supposed would 
never accept a challenge. Mr. President, the 
whole world knows, and therefore the Senator 
from G-eorgia must know, that the people of 
the free States of this Union have utterly con- 
demned, repudiated and abolished the old and 
barfearious practice of duehng; every intelligent 



man knows, and therefore the Senator from 
G-eorgia knows, that if a Senator here from 
either of these States should engage in a duel, 
he would, for that cause alone, whatever might 
be his excuse, be deserted and proscribed ; that 
he would be treated as an outcast ; while, if 
he should kill his adversary, he would be sub- 
jected to indictment and trial for murder, and 
would forever be excluded from all public trust 
of honor or profit. This tone of high moral 
sentiment is just and righteous in itself, and I 
do not mean to gainsay it now ; but I do feel 
that it has placed me at a disadvantage here. 
I feel it frequently ; I feel that it often places 
all of us here at the mercy of those who, not 
having adopted the same just sentiments, act 
towards us as if they construed our constrained 
forbearance into a want of courage. Our 
Northern people have no reason to distrust the 
courage of any portion of their fellow-citizens. 
Physical courage, with our Northern people, 
is a sentiment so general, that I must say that 
it is cheapened by its universality. No man 
suspects another to be a coward ; for it would 
be an exception to almost a universal rule. 
Who ever has seen the Northern people called 
into the field of combat to maintain their rights, 
and not known that braver men never stepped 
upon the quarter-deck, braver men never en- 
tered the perilous breach? Who ever heard of 
a coward among them all, where duty calls? 
Sir, we on this side, if I understand the Sena- 
tor from Georgia, and the untold millions whom . 
we represent, have not the courage to maintain 
our honor. Even if I thought that 

Mr. TOOMBS. I refer the honorable Sena- 
tor to my speech. I made no such allegation 
against the people of the North. I said that 
people who did not maintain their obligations, 
(and I was alluding especially to the Eepubli- 
can party,) people who would violate their 
compacts, were not to be dreaded when they 
threatened to march down their millions upon 
us. The speech is in print. There is no such 
allegation against the people of the North ; but 
the gentlemen seem to consider themselves the 
people of the North, and I do not. That is 
the difference between us. 

Mr. WADE. Here is precisely what the 
Senator did say : I may construe it differently 
from him, perhaps. Let us see what was his 
language : 

" I doubt if there be five, out of all tbe members of 
tlie Eepublican party on this floor, who will etand up 



here to-day, and say they are willing, either by State or 
Federal legislation, or in any other manner, to nphold 
and compTy with this provision of the Constitution. 
I do not believe there are enough to meet God's final 
requisition to save Sodom. No, sir ; they mock at 
constitutional obligations, jeer at oaths." 

A little further on lie said : 

" They place great reliance on this arm of the Black 
Eepublican phalanx [alluding to the slaves, I suppose]. 
When they get ready for this brotherly work, in the 
name and behalf of my constituents I extend to them 
a cordial invitation to come down to see us. But it is 
due to candor to say that their reputation needs some 
building up among my constituents. We do not think 
those men the most dangerous who are the most faith- 
less to their compacts ; and, in very truth, we have but 
small fear of men, even as leaders of untold millions, 
who have not manhood enough to maintain and defend 
their own honors." 

I supposed that the leader was as courageous, 
at all events, as those he led. That was the 
construction that I put upon it. I supposed 
that it was a declaration that we, and' those 
whom we represent, lacked that courage which 
is necessary to maintain our own honor when 
it is impeached. If the gentleman says that 
was not 

Mr. TOOMBS. I call the Senator's atten- 
tion to this : I said that those persons who 
were faithless to their compacts, who passed 
personal liberty bills, were not to be dreaded ; 
and there is no other construction, I think, to 
be put on the language fairly, though the Sen- 
ator can give it what construction he pleases. 

Mr. WADE. I accept the gentleman's con- 
struction of it. I put a much larger construc- 
tion on it than that; but I am very glad to 
hear the Senator's explanation, because I see 
that it is no particular merit to us, nor to the 
, gentlemen on that side, that we generally have 
physical courage. We inherit it from our he- 
roic ancestors, who, when occasion required it, 
dragged guilty kings from their thrones, and 
deprived them of their crowns, because they 
undertook to trample upon the rights of the 
people ; and we, their descendants, I trust in 
•God, are a=; ready to vindicate, not only our 
honor, but lur rights, as were our ancestors, 
^t any period. 

I do not differ widely with the Senator on 
■one point. The man wLo would be faithless 
to his obligations, and would commit perjury, 
I think would be very apt to be a coward ; but 
on the subject of dueling, I do not wish to be 
misunderstood either here or by our people at 
'home. I agree with them, that it is a barba- 
rous mode of settling difficulties at best, and 
ought to be totally unnecessary in the advanced 
stage of civilization to which we have arrived 
in this country. The restraints of civilized life 
with us are generally sufficient, and they ought 



to be always sufficient among us, to oblige 
every man to suppress violent utterances and to 
keep within bounds of moderation and respect- 
ful consideration of the rights and feehngs of 
others. The case may be quite different in 
semi-civilized communities, where there are no 
such other restraints. I do not know but the 
duel may be necessary there. In any commu- 
nity, if a man cannot be restrained from offer- 
ing insult by any more elevated principle than 
fear, it may be necessary that he be compelled 
to respect the rights of others, even by the 
fear of combat. And I do not say that I should 
not, in an extreme case, maintain my own 
rights in that barbarous way here, whatever 
might be thought of it at home. I have said 
enough, ;Mr. President, I trust, on that point. 

The Senator charges us all with perjury and 
disloyalty to the Constitution. Just see, now, 
how inconsistent a gentleman, in the heat of 
argument, may become. He has taken here 
an oath to support the Constitution; the same 
oath which we have taken, and which he ac- 
cuses us of breaking; and yet he announced 
to us that he is impatient — nay, eager — for a 
symbol of war from the Old Dominion against 
the Constitution and the Union. I do not use 
his exact language, though I have it before roe. 
He is ready and eager to second her motion. 
"One blast from her bugle-horn," he said, 
"would call to their feet a million of men." A 
million of men, sirl A million of men for 
what? Why, a million of men to topple 
down the pillars of this Eepubhc, and over- 
whelm the whole country in one universal 
ruin. 

And all this the million of men roused by 
the bugle-horn of the Old Dominion are to do 
next March, if a Republican shall be elected, 
constitutionally elected President, in Novem- 
ber. Does he not stand on high ground, sir ? 
I ask him to say, for himself, that he occupies 
high vantage ground, while charging us with 
treason and violation of our oaths, when he is 
with the same breath threatening to pull down 
the pillars of the Union. Sir, if this is not 
treason, then I do not know what it is. If it 
is not a violation of the oath to support the 
Constitution, then I do not understand the im- 
port of the words. I know, indeed, that these 
things are said in the heat of debate, and may 
mean but very httle ; but they go out to the 
world as deliberate debates, and therefore must 
be noticed here. 



And now I dismiss this point, and pass from 
the declamation to the argument of the gen- 
tleman from Georgia ; for, as I have said, he 
is among the ablest of his class. No man is 
more competent to make out a case against the 
Eepublicans or the people of the North. He 
has deliberated long ; he has studied deeply, 
not merely in the history of ancient and mod- 
ern Europe, but even in the history of ancient 
G-reece, to fortify his argument. What does" 
his accusation amount to ? First, we have not 
been quite nimble-footed enough in executing 
his fugitive law. He gives us not one instance, 
not one case of delinquency. He is content 
with making a general charge, that we are 
faithless to the Constitution in this respect. 
Now, sir, I know of no case of resistance to 
the execution of the fugitive law in the State 
of Ohio. I know a great many men there 
who believe, before God and man, that it is 
unconstitutional, yet I know of no man who 
has stood forth to resist its execution. On the 
contrary, whenever a case under it has come 
before our courts, it has been carefully scruti- 
nized, and the law has been most rigorously 
executed. There have been doubtful cases; 
there have even been cases in which there was 
little room left for doubt that the seeming rem- 
edies granted by that law have been perverted 
to the atrocious purpose of kidnapping and 
carrying freemen into slavery. 

A citizen of Ohio, not long ago, whose name 
I do not now recollect, was taken to St, Louis, 
and there imprisoned under State law, to be 
sold into slavery to pay the charges of his de- 
tention, until he was released by the people of 
Ohio. This was no solitary case ; such cases 
frequently occur. I meet the general charge 
with a general denial; and I assert, that the 
people of Ohio have not been faithless in the 
execution of this most rigorous, odious, and, as 
I believe, in many of its provisions, unconsti- 
tutional law. I pass briefly over the point that 
the constitutional provision concerning fugitives 
devolves on the State Governments, and not 
upon Congress, the courts havmg adjudicated 
that point against my opinions. I will say, 
however, that no lawyer would agree with the 
courts, were it a case of the first impression. 
I deny, moreover^ that the decisions of the 
courts have been uniform, as the Senator from 
Georgia claims. Judge Hornblower, of New 
Jersey, on habeas corpus, held the law uncon- 
stitutional, and discharged the fugitive for that 



reason. We have one Senator among us hero 
[Mr. Wigfall] who thinks that the late Mr. 
Webster knew less of constitutional law than 
most other men. It is not for me to re-esta- 
blish Mr. Webster ; but whether he knew much 
or little, it was his dehberate opinion that the 
law had no warrant in the Constitution, though 
he deferred to decisions of the courts. 

I come now to your new fugitive bill, which, 
in many of its provisions, I have no doubt is 
unconstitutional ; and I think in these points it 
has not yet been judged constitutional. It is 
not, however, my purpose to argue its consti- 
tutionahty. I meet in this case, as I did in the 
law of 1793, the vague charge of unfaithfulness 
on our part with a general denial. I call your 
attention, sir, to the fact that there prevails 
among the people very generally an idea that 
many of the provisions of that law are uncon- 
stitutional. This idea tends to produce irrita- 
tion. Why do the people adopt the idea that 
it is unconstitutional ? The subject being col- 
lateral, I will only allude to that section of the 
law which confers judicial powers on commis- 
sioners appointed by the courts, who are not, 
and cannot, thus appointed, be judges. The 
people believe this provision unconstitutional, 
and so do L 

Again : the bill gives ten dollars for a deci- 
sion in favor of the claimant, and five for a 
decision in favor of the fugitive. Gentlemen 
here have ridiculed the idea that such an induce- 
ment could bias the magistrate ; but I believe, 
with the people, that such magistrates as you 
generally have, under this law, would be deter- 
mined by a thirtieth part of the fee that was 
paid Judas Iscariot for hke services. The 
people, for what I know, may think this pro- 
vision unconstitutional I agree with them so 
far as to say, that if meanness in a law could 
make it unconstitutional, the people are 
right. 

Again, there is another provision in the law : 
when you have got the certificate of the magis- 
trate, the alleged fugitive can be taken out of 
the State in defiance of the writ of haheas cor- 
pus. Thus the law, in time of profound peace, 
strikes down this great writ of freedom, and in 
this I also agree with them. The law not only 
denies the writ of habeas corpus, but it also 
denies the trial by jury — an essential right. It 
is these portions of the law that render it so 
odious and unpopular. The people know that 
its execution is attended with dangers to hu* 



6 



man freedom, and they are jealous of sum- 
mary proceedings so extraordinary and unu- 
sual. 

Sir, we have never denied the obligation of 
the States to deliver fugitives who are such 
within the purview of the Constitution of the 
United States — never, never. But the law is 
an exceedingly offensive and obnoxious law. 
You know that, without my telling you. The 
people of the free States are deeply imbued 
with the sentiment that, under the Constitu- 
tion and laws of the United States, as under 
the law of nature, every innocent man has a 
right to liberty. They do, however, well know, 
and so understand, that the Constitution of the 
United States permits a man in one State, who 
is held by the laws thereof to owe service or 
labor to another man, to be reclaimed when he 
flees from such obligation, to be dehvered up 
to such claimant. This provision of the Con- 
stitution our people neither deny nor resist. 
But the Senator from G-eorgia, and every other 
Senator, knows how difficult it is to execute a 
law which goes against the hearts and con- 
sciences of the great mass of the people. We 
may complain of it; we might even deplore 
it ; but no law-making authority could mend 
the case. Nothing short of the interposition 
of Almighty power, changing the hearts of 
men, can make them prompt and eager to exe- 
cute your obnoxious law. 

I do not stand here to deceive you, my 
friends. I tell you the truth just as it is. Out 
of every thousand men who shall see a race 
between a claimant and a slave, nine hundred 
and ninety-nine will, from the bottom of their 
hearts, wish him to escape. Neither you nor 
I can help the matter by legislation. Acting 
as magistrates sworn to execute the law, it may 
be executed when a case is completely made 
out, beyond all chance for casuistry or cavil; 
but very little practical benefit can result from 
it. Who is to be blamed for it ? Look at your 
own section, and you find there human nature 
exactly the same, when the slave-trader brings 
the slaves stolen from Africa into your ports in 
violation of the laws making the act piracy, 
and denouncing against it the punishment of 
death. Your jurors acquit him against all evi- 
dence and the admonitions of the courts. The 
innocent men thus stolen from Africa, and thus 
brought into your States, are irreclaimably sold 
in your markets ; ostentatiously advertised, and 
sold at your agricultural fairs. I assert, then, 



that the slave pirate goes abroad with impu- 
nity in your States, because your magistrates 
cannot execute the law. With what face, then, 
can you stand here, and accuse us of not being 
swift-footed enough in executing a law which 
is a greater abomination to us than the laws 
abolishing the African slave-trade can be to 
you? 

Mr. President, there should be a little reason 
and common sense exercised in these cases. I 
do not care if every judge and every marshal 
may be ever so eager to execute your law ; if 
the hearts of the people, I say again, are op- 
posed to it, who is to blame for that ? If there 
is any blame, it is on Him who moulded the 
hearts of men. Your law can give you no 
remedy. You may multiply its penalties ; you 
may make it bristle all over like a porcupine 
with penalties ; it would be of no service to 
you ; because, although when you get a case 
you may execute it under the oaths of your 
magistrates, ninety-nine times in one hundred, 
the people being against you, the fugitive will 
find a way to escape in precisely the same way 
that your pirates, who bring men fi*om Aftica 
and sell them in the market, constantly escape 
with you. Now, sir, I would have just as 
much ground to stand here and accuse the 
whole South of being guilty of perjury, and 
guilty of the most manifest violation of all law, 
because the victims of the Wanderer were not 
released, and the officers of that vessel con- 
demned and executed, as they deserved to be, 
as you have to stand forth and say that we on 
our part do not execute laws equally and far 
more odious to us. 

The next accusation, and the strongest one, 
of the Senator from Georgia, is, that we pass 
what he calls personal Hberty bills, which were, 
as he claimed, in violation of the Constitution 
of the United States; and he said that tlie 
State of Ohio occupied the same position with 
the other free States in that particular. Well, 
sir, as he placed Ohio upon the same ground 
with the others, I have not taken pains to 
examine the action of the others, trusting that 
if there was no foundation under heaven for 
the charge he made against Ohio, it was equally 
groundless against the other States. I say, 
then, to that Senator and the Senate, that the 
State of Ohio has never passed a law in viola- 
tion of the Constitution of the United States; 
that it never has been derelict in its duty in 
this respect. Does any Senator here suppose 



that a sovereign State in this Union is going 
to rehnquish all her right of protection over 
her citizens, because there is a provision of the 
Federal Constitution by which a certain class 
of individuals may be taken out of the State ? 
That would be to abandon every individual to 
the ruthless claim of any unprincipled man who 
sought to claim him. Cannot a sovereign State 
of this Union prevent the kidnapping of her 
free citizens, because you have a right to claim 
a slave fleeing from service ? ■— 

The Constitution of the United States does 
indeed say that the escaping fugitive shall be 
given up. But it does not prescribe how the 
fact that he owes service shall be ascertained ; 
and the Constitution of the United States does 
not mean that any freeman of a State shall be 
given up as a fugitive. Now, I appeal to the 
candor of the Senator from Georgia. He has 
read with great care the proceedings of the 
Federal Constitutional Convention. He knows 
the jealousy concerning State rights that per- 
vaded that body. Does he beheve that its 
members would have ever consented to a pro- 
vision which would have deprived the States 
of the power to protect and defend their own 
citizens? No, sir, never. 

You are continually repeating the assertion 
that this fugitive slave law provision was deem- 
ed an important one by the fathers, and that the 
Union could not have been effected without it. 
On the contrary, sir, it was a mere afterthought. 
The Constitution was complete, in ah its im- 
portant provisions, before any man thought of 
this thing. It was put into the Constitution 
with very Httle deliberation ; and those who 
put it there had no idea that, in doing so, they 
were taking away from the States the most 
important element of sovereignty — namely, 
their power to protect their own citizens against 
unlawful seizures and searches and extradition. 
The rights of the States, the only protection 
made against overpowering and concentrated 
despotism, were the one especial object of pre- 
servation. The States battled inch by inch 
against the surrender of any State power. I 
judge, therefore, that they never intended to 
confer upon Congress, or upon any one State, 
or anybody, a right to enter another sovereign 
State, and take away, in a summary and arbi- 
trary manner, whomsoever he should choose 
to claim as a fugitive from another State. 

But the Senator said that the free States, 
and Ohio among the rest, have committed a 



kind of perjury in disregarding your fugitive 
law, by passing personal Uberty bills. So far 
as the law of Ohio is concerned, we shah, see 
how plain a tale wiU put down his argument. 
Her law consists of three sections. The saving 
clause of the last section prevents any such 
construction as the Senator himself put upon 
the statute. It is entitled, " A law to prevent 
slaveholding and kidnapping in Ohio." The 
last section declares : 

" Nothing in the preceding sections of this act shall 
apply to any act done by any person under the author- 
ity of the Constitution of the United States, or of any 
law of the United States made in pursuance thereof." 

Now, I ask the Senator from Georgia, if he 
was upon the bench, and a fugitive from labor 
or service in another State was brought before 
him, under the provisions of this law, would 
he find any difQ.culty in surrendering him into 
the hands of the person who had made out his 
claim to his service ? Would he say that the 
preceding section of this law overruled this 
explanatory clause, and that he was bound, at 
all events, to trample the Constitution under 
foot ? No, sir ; he would give it no such con- 
struction as that. 

;Mr. President, I say in all sincerity and ear- 
nestness to every man who holds to the conser- 
vation of State rights, that you endanger the 
rights of your own State, you endanger the 
hberties of this whole nation, when you con- 
tend against the power of the States to pass 
laws protecting their own citizens from unlaw- 
ful seizures and kidnapping. At aU hazards, 
neither asperity of language, nor a frowning 
brow, nor violent denunciation, will ever in- 
duce the State of Ohio to forget what belongs 
to her sovereignty, what is due to her honor, 
and the protection of her own citizens. She 
takes no prouder position on this subject than, 
I hope in God, every other State in the Union 
does. Then the Senator was wrong, he was 
uncandid, to stand forth and say that our con- 
stituents are perjured, that they are traitors, 
that they have violated the law of the land, 
when they had taken every precaution to award 
to the citizens of other States, holding a spe- 
cies of property that we utterly repudiate, all 
their rights. 

The State of Ohio sends no Senators here to 
denounce the sovereignties or people of other 
States; but when her rights are disputed oi 
her honor assailed in this high council, her 
ambassadors here would be unfaitliful to their 
trust if they did not hurl back such unjust 
imputations. 



8 



The third count in the Senator's indictment 
IS, that we intend to prohibit slavery in the 
vast Territories of this Union. That charge, I 
confess, is true. We do so intend. If I un- 
derstand the objects and purposes of the Repub- 
hcan party, if I understand the emergencies 
of the case that brought that great party into 
existence, it was this very subject. The G-en- 
eral Government, acting in Congress, faithlessly 
to all that it had covenanted heretofore, had 
broken down every barrier, and violated every 
pledge it had given of freedom in any of our 
Territories. These covenants being overthrown, 
the Republican party arose to rescue freedom. 
Had there been no violation of the Missouri 
compromise, it is very probable there would 
have been no Republican party here. We did 
embody ourselves into a party, in order to res- 
cue, protect, and defend, the free Territories 
of this country against the pollution of slavery. 
I have no concealments to make. There we 
now stand ; this is our platform ; on it we will 
stand forever. 

But the Senator says that the slaveholders 
have an undoubted right to go with their slaves 
into the Territories of the United States, under 
the Constitution of the United States ; and he 
claims that a decision of the Supreme Court 
gives them that warrant. There is no man 
who has more reverence for the decision of 
honest courts, when mgide on due dehberation, 
upon matters of private right, and within their 
jurisdiction, than I have. I know how essen- 
tial it is to the peace and welfare of every 
community that the decisions of courts settling 
the private rights of men in the last resort, 
even if they are believed to be wrong, must 
be lived up to and have effect. That has been 
my education — my principle ; what I have held 
always, and hold to-day ; but in just as much 
as I revere an honest court, keeping within its 
own jurisdiction, restraining itself from all po- 
Utical considerations, and adjudging the rights 
of men according to the law in its purity, so 
in exact proportion do I abhor and scout from 
me a corrupt judge, who, for any purpose, will 
impertinently reach over, outside, and be- 
yond the case before him, and endeavor to 
advance the pohtical cause of one party or an- 
other by decisions that he may pretend to 
make. 

Sir, it is the same with Federal courts as 
with every other. The moment a Federal 
court transcends its legitimate authority, for 



the purpose of effecting some pohtical object 
its interference is impertinent ; it is of no va- 
lidity ; and, with the high courts of Georgia, I 
say, I hold it in utter contempt. Yes, sir, [to 
Mr. Toombs,] I like the spirit of your courts, 
from which you are now so ready to depart. 
They stood up against what they considered a 
corrupt decision of this Federal court, and said 
they held it in utter contempt. That was 
right. Well, sir, if there ever was a holding 
on God's earth that would warrant any judge, 
private man, or Senator, in saying that he held 
it in utter contempt, it is what is called the 
Dred Scott decision, so manifestly a usurpation 
of power ; so manifestly done in order to give 
a bias to political action, that no man, though 
he be £^fool, can fail to see it. 

What was the case ? An old negro, whom 
age had rendered valueless, happens to fall in 
the way of the pohticians at a period when it 
was thought exceedingly desirable that the 
question of Congressional authority over slave- 
ry in the Territories shall be tried, and Dred 
Scott prosecutes for his hberty in the Federal 
courts ; and, by the way, after he had prose- 
cuted his case through, and his liberty was 
denied him by the court, I believe the very 
next day the master gave him his hberty. He 
had served the purposes of the politicians, and 
they ought to have given him a pension for 
life for having been the John Doe of the trans- 
action. I do not know of what authority the 
case may be, but its getting-up looks to me 
exceedingly suspicious. There was a concur- 
rence of circumstances that very rarely happen 
of themselves. Old Dred Scott sued for his 
freedom, and a plea was put in that he, being 
a descendant of an African, and his ancestors 
slaves, he could not sue in that court ; he had 
no right to be there, had no standing there. 
The court go on and argue themselves into the 
belief that either a man may be so monstrously 
low, or the court itself so monstrously high, 
that he cannot sue in its presence for his rights, 
I believe this is the first nation on God's earth 
that ever placed any mortal man, or anybody 
bearing the human form, on so low a level, or 
any court on so high a one, as that. But let 
this go. Dred Scott brought his suit. The 
plea in abatement was demurred to ; the ques- 
tion arose upon that demurrer, and a majority 
of the court decided that Dred Scott, being a 
negro, a descendant of an African, and his an- 
cestors having been slaves, he could not main 



9 



tain a suit in tliat court, because he was not a 
citizen, under the law. Now, sir, I ask every 
lawyer here, was not there an end of the case ? 
In the name of G-od, Judge Taney, what did 
you retain it for any longer ? You said Dred 
Scott could not sue ; he could not obtain his 
liberty ; he was out of court ; and what further 
had you to do with all the questions that you 
say were involved in that suit? Upon every 
principle of adjudication, you ought not to have 
gone further. No court has ever held it more 
solemnly than the Federal courts, that they 
will not go on to decide any more than is before 
the court, and necessary to make the decision ; 
and every lawyer knows that if they do, all 
they say more is mere talk, and, though said 
by judges in a court-house, has just as much 
operation and effect as if it had been said by a 
horse-dealer, in a bar-room, and no more. And 
yet we are told that we must follow the dicta 
of these packed judges — for they were packed, 
ajid I have about as httle respect for a packed 
court as I have for a packed jury — a majority 
of them interested, too, as I believe, in the 
very question to be decided ; for, I believe, the 
majority who concurred in the opinion were all 
slaveholders, and, of course, if anybody was 
interested to give a favorable construction to 
the holders of that species of property, these 
men were interested in the question. 

Strange as it may appear, those who com- 
plain of Northern aggression have not only 
every other department under their feet, but 
with less than one-third of the population^ of 
the North, you happen to have a majority 
of the Supreme Court on your side, and always 
have had. I will not say that that is the reason 
why the decisions of courts of late are magni- 
fied into such importance. Immaculate their 
decisions are now, it seems. The very party 
who, a few years ago, within the memory of 
us all, held that their decisions were of no effect 
whatever on governmental action, when com- 
ing in conflict with the views of the President 
or the co-ordinate branches of the Government, 
have turned round of late, and have found a 
virtue in that court that can ride triumphantly 
over every other department of this Govern- 
ment. It is a palpable heresy, and must be 
abandoned. The liberties of this nation cannot 
vionsist with the doctrine now set up on the 
jther side of this Chamber with regard to your 
cSupreme Court. 

1 do not want to go back to see what Jefferson 
2 



and others said about it. I know the nature 
of man. I know, as they knew, that to arm 
this judiciary with a power, not only to decide 
questions between private individuals, but to 
affect the legislation of the nation, to affect the 
action of your President, to affect the co-ordi- 
nate branches of this Government, is a fatal 
heresy that, if persisted in by a majority of the 
people, cannot result in any other than an utter 
consoUdated despotism ; and I am amazed that 
men who have had their eyes open, and who 
have held to other doctrines in better days, 
should, for any temporary purpose, heave over- 
board, and bury in the deep sea, the sheet- 
anchor of the hberties of this nation. 

I say to my friends on the other side — for I 
call them friends for this purpose — ^we are all 
interested alike in this question. God knows, " 
if you once have it established, and acquiesced 
in by the people of this Union, that the dicta 
of the Supreme Court — a political court by its 
very constitution, yea, packed on this very 
subject, as every Senator here knows — are to 
be the laws binding on every other department, 
we have the meanest despotism that ever pre- 
vailed on God Almighty's earth. But I have 
no fears of it, sir. You may effect a temporary 
purpose by it; but a doctrine so absurd, so 
incompatible with the minds of the Anglo- 
Saxon race, so inconsistent with the great 
principles of free government, will never be 
permitted to stand. ' 

In the Dred Scott decision — I will not call 
it a decision, but in this dictum^ this talk of the 
judges, for that was all it was — they overturned 
every decision their own court had made for 
more than seventy years ; they holding, prior 
to that time, that Congress had full and plenary 
power over the Territories of the United States. 
Judge Marshall so decided, and the court had 
followed his decision, and every other depart- 
ment of the government was well satisfied. 
Therefore, this infallible court can overturn the 
most settled decisions of its own and of other 
courts, and nobody can question its acts ! A 
strange doctrine that, that the sayings of men 
who were put upon the bench under the most 
questionable circumstances, packed for a par- 
ticular decision, and not having a chance even 
to make that upon the question before them, 
should be the neplus ultra, after they them- 
selves have overturned all that have gone 
before them. This is a position that cannot 
outlive this generation. 



10 



Where did these judges find the power in 
the Constitution of the United States to carry 
/ slavery into the Territories ? If they had any- 
thing to ground their dida upon, they had the 
power to show it written in the Constitution 
of the United States; but there is no such 
thing there. I remember very well reading 
(for I was not here at that time) that in 1850 
Mr. Calhoun set up this doctrine, and it was so 
extreme that he had no second in the Senate. 
He was challenged by Mr. Clay upon it. Mr. 
Clay told him he was amazed and astonished 
that any man should hold such a doctrine, and 
he asked him : " Where do you find your con- 
stitutional warrant for it?" and told him, at 
the same time, that it was more latitudinous 
than anything ever held by old John Adams 
and the Federal party at any period. Mr. 
Calhoun, I think, found no warrant in the 
Constitution ; he did not deign to reply. Yet, 
within ten years, this doctrine has grown up 
into a great tree, so that some fowls lodge in 
the branches thereof. [Laughter.] 

They find no warrant in the Constitution ; 
they find none in legal logic or reason. It is 
said now that the Territories being the com- 
mon property of the States, the citizens of each 
State have a right to go into them with any 
property that they perchance may have. I 
deny the postulate. These Territories do not 
belong to the States, as States. They belong 
to the people of the United States. Congress 
is the trustee for them ; but no State can claim 
any portion of them. The States, as States, 
have nothing to do with them. Suppose the 
Senator from Ilhnois [Mr. Douglas] owns a 
plantation in Mississippi, in his own right or 
that of his children, and he has slaves there 
working upon that plantation, while he is a 
P""resident of the State of Illinois. Suppose there 
is a Congressional prohibition saying that he 
cannot take his property into that new Terri- 
tory, Let me ask these casuists now, which 
State is it whose sovereignty is invaded ; that 
where the Senator lives, or that where the 
negroes live ? Can anybody tell me ? State 
equality, they say, is not preserved. But the 
State equality of which State ? IlHnois, where 
the slaves are owned, is her sovereignty hewed 
down, or the sovereignty of the State of Mis- 
sissippi, where the negroes hoe the Senator's 
corn and pick his cotton? There never has 
been a respectable argument for any such posi- 
tion as that. 



May not the same ground be applied to other 
cases ? Suppose we had annexed — as I pre- 
sume we shall ultimately annex — the Fejee 
Islands to this nation. In those islands, the 
people not only enslave each other, but they_ 
actually kill and eat each other. Now, suppose" 
a Senator from the State of Fejee should appear 
in this body j suppose that he should claim the 
right of his constituents to bring their chattels 
into any of our Territories, and claim the right 
of the law in that country to practise canni- 
bahsm upon them, that he might roast and boil 
them as well as enslave them. He would 
claim, if you did not permit this to be done, 
" that the State of Fejee has not equal rights 
with the other States of this Union ; a gentle- 
man owns his property ; it is an undoubted law 
of my State that we may fatten men for the 
roast, and we have a right to bring them here 
for the same purpose ; and if you do not per- 
mit us to do so, we will pull down the columns 
of the Republic, laying it outspread in one 
universal ruin." [Laughter,] I suppose the 
Senator fi^om Ilhnois [Mr. Douglas] would say, 
" The Territories have a perfect right to vote 
cannibalism in or to vote it out; I do not care 
whether they vote it up or down ; but they 
have the right, and shall be perfectly free to 
do it." [Laughter.] Another Senator would.^ 
arise, and say that the people of Fejee not only 
have the right to bring them in, but they have 
the right to be protected in doing so there under 
the laws of Congress. Another one says that 
Congress has no power to pass laws on that 
subject whatever; but the courts, which are 
now omnipotent in all things, may, without 
law, declare what the law is, and we must all 
bow down to it. There is a difference even on 
the other side as to these shades or colors of 
Congressional authority ; but, nevertheless, you 
are all in for spreading slavery to the ends of 
the earth. 

Take another case — one that is likely to 
occur a httle sooner, perhaps. Suppose Brig- 
ham Young should come from the State of 
Utah, when it is a State, into Kansas, or any 
other Territory, and bring with him his forty 
wives, and the Territory has a law that a man 
shall have but one wife. Brigham says, " These 
are my property ; yea, more than my property ; 
yea, they are forty ribs taken out of my body 
while I slept ; I must bring them in here, or 
the State of Utah will not be on an equal foot- 
ing with the other States of this Union." 



11 



Away with such logic. There is no guaranty 
in the Constitution of the United States for 
such a position as that. Our safety, Mr. Pres- 
ident, consists in keeping close to the Consti- 
tution. Whatever we claim, let us find the 
direct warrant for it there, or the necessary 
implication to carry out some other power that 
is manifestly granted. The moment we go 
astray from this, we are in the fog; we are in 
dispute; we endanger the harmony of our 
action, and it is done in this instance. In this 
great departure from the earher principles of 
this G-overnment, you have involved portions 
of the nation in almost irretrievable hostihty 
to each other. Let us go back to the Consti- 
tution, and follow it. 

Mr. President, I will notice one other posi- 
tion. Waiving all constitutional law on this 
subject — for we are not compelled to do all 
that we have a constitutional right to do — I 
will suppose, for the purposes of this argument, 
that you have authority to take youf slaves 
into a Territory, and hold them there ; still, is 
it expedient, is it just and proper to do it? 
This brings up a question which has been inci- 
dentally debated during this session several 
times. Originally, it now stands confessed 
here ; the framers of our institutions, the fathers 
of the Republic, all, I beheve, without a dis- 
senting voice, (if there were any, I do^.not 
know it,) held that slaveholding was against 
common right, was against natural right, was 
wrong in itself, and therefore should not be 
cherished or encouraged. 

Now, Senators say here, that the slavehold- 
ing States have reconsidered this subject with 
great deliberation, and they have found that 
this old view was wrong; that slavery is a 
normal condition ; that it is a blessing to soci- 
ety ; that it is the best state and condition that 
a man can be in, and therefore ought to be 
extended. That is the only issue which I vv^ish 
to draw in upon this subject with any party, 
because I know that your determination now 
to extend slavery into the Territories arises 
from this new philosophy of yours. If you are 
right upon that, I will go with you. If you 
are right, let. us extend slavery to the four 
winds of heaven ; let us employ missionaries 
to preach the glories of slavery, and induce the 
whole world to divide itself, and one-half be- 
come slaveholders, and the other half slaves. 

Sir, I am glad to see this great question 
placed at last upon a solid foundation; for 



every man knows that no pohtical principle 
can be based permanently on anything short 
of eternal justice and right. Now, I do not care 
for what the Senator from Georgia and others 
have told us, that slaveholding was the basis 
upon which society had been founded for thirty 
centuries. We, at least, have discovered that 
it is a sandy foundation. It is fast washing 
away ; and in exact proportion to the advance 
of mankind in civilization and in knowledge, 
on all hands this old principle is deemed barba- 
rous, and is wearing away. Upon that issue, 
I will meet you ; it is a fair one. If it is right, 
extend it; if it is wrong, let it die the death, 
as all error and falsehood must die. I hardly 
know how to meet this issue in argument; for 
I have been in the habit of beheving, v^ith the 
fathers of the Constitution, that liberty is the 
gift of G-od to every human being. With them, 
I have supposed it is self-evident, and incapa- 
ble of illustration by argument. I would appeal 
from all your casuistry to the promptings of 
the human heart. Who within the sound of my 
voice would not say, with the immortal Henry, 
" Give me liberty or give me death ?" If there 
be any, let him speak. Who had not rather 
infinitely follow a friend or relation to the grave, 
than into the shambles of slavery ? Not a man. 
Human nature revolts at it. .^ 

I know it is said that the African is an infe- 
rior race, incapable of defending his own rights. 
My ethics teach me, if it be so, that this fact, 
so far from giving me a right to enslave him, 
requires that I shall be more scrupulous of his 
rights ; but I know that, whether he be equal 
to me or not, he is still a human being ; negroes 
are still men. Senators will bear me witness 
that there are thousands now in bondage who 
are much more white than black — yea, tens 
of thousands of such; but, whether white or 
black, I say again, they are still human ; they 
are animated by the same hopes, they are 
afflicted with the same sorrows, they are actu- 
ated by the same motives, that we are. Like 
us, they may be deprived of every right ; they 
may be treated like brutes ; their souls may be 
ignored ; you may whip, scourge, and trample 
them in the dust ; but they will rise from your 
utmost degradation, and stand forth in the im- 
age of G-od, the conscious candidates of immor- 
tal life. This gives them a full assurance of 
their manhood, and stands as an eternal pro- 
phecy that they are not always to be slaves. 
It is part and parcel of human nature. It is 



12 



implanted in every human soul, by the finger 
of God. You cannot eradicate it; and yet, 
while it remains, your institution cannot be 
secure. 

There are other reasons enough to show 
that it is not the normal condition of man. 
Whence this tremulous perturbation of the 
~Avhole South on this subject ? Why this fear 
that their institution will be overturned by 
every breath? Why is it that you withhold 
from these men and women the knowledge of 
reading and writing ? What mean your nightly 
patrols, that I see your laws provide for ? What 
means this persecution of Northern men who 
go among you ? What is the fear you have 
of this Helper book, that we have heard so 
much of? What means this robbery of the 
mails and censorship of the press through all 
the South? If slavery is the normal condi- 
tion, do you fear that the handiwork of God 
will be overthrown by these frivolous means ? 
No, sir ; never. It falsifies the pretence that 
it is a normal condition of mankind. Society 
in the North needs no such artificial props as 
these to sustain it. You may come up there ; 
you may attack our institutions ; we will invite 
you, wherever you please to come, to preach 
the glories of slavery as the normal condition 
of man, and our institutions will stand firmer 
than ever by the conflict. We fear no such 
thing. Why ? Because, although the Senator 
from Virginia [Mr. Hunter] said that slavery 
was the normal condition, and, if I understood 
him, that fi:eedom was an experiment yet, and 
likely to come out second best, nevertheless 
everything around you shows the security of 
the North. The perfect contentedness of the 
North shows which is the normal and which 
the other condition. Look to the great North- 
west, to which I belong. There is a white 
population to-day, northwest of the river Ohio, 
as great as that of all your slave States, so 
secure, so impassive, so conscious of their own 
strength, that they are an empire in themselves, 
I am here day after day, and my constituents 
ask nothing of me but to be let alone. Here 
we hear this clamor from the South about 
Southern rights, day after day, year after year, 
disturbing elements in our political progress 
constantly ; and yet you hear nothing from the 
security of freedom and free labor in those 
regions. All this goes to show that slavery is 
not the normal condition of man — that it is an 
institution which has survived the exigencies 



of the times which permitted it to be estab- 
lished, and now lives on the bare sufferance 
of mankind. 

I have nothing to say of slavery in the States. 
I do not wish to say, and would not say, a 
word about it, because I am candid enough to 
confess that I do not know what you can do 
with it there. I want no finger with it in 
your own States. I leave it to yourselves. It 
is bad enough, to be sure, that four millions 
of unpaid labor now is operating there, in 
competition with the free labor of the North ; 
but I have nothing to say of that. Within 
your own boundaries, conduct it in your own 
way ; but it is wrong. Your new philosophy 
cannot stand the scrutiny of the present age. 
It is a departure from the views and principles 
of your fathers ; yea, it is founded in the self- 
ishness and cupidity of man, and not in the 
justice of God. There is the difficulty with 
your institution. There is what makes you 
fear that it may, sooner or later, be overturned ; 
but, sir, I shall do nothing to overturn it. If I 
could do it with the wave of my hand in your 
States, I should not know how to do it, or 
what you should do. All I say is, that, in the 
vast Territories of this nation, I will allow no 
such curse to have a foothold. If I am right, 
and slavery stands branded and condemned by 
the God of nature, then, for Heaven's sake, go 
with me to hmit it, and not propagate this curse. 
I am candid enough to admit that you gentle- 
men on the other side, if you ever become 
convinced, as I doubt not you will, that this 
institution does not stand by the rights of na- 
ture nor by the will of God, you yourselves 
will be willing to put a Hmit to it. You have 
only departed because your philosophy has led 
you away. Sir, I leave you with the argu- 
ment. 

And now, Mr. President, in conclusion, I 
would ask Senators what they find in the Re- 
publican party that is so repulsive to them that 
they must lay hold of the pillars of this Union, 
and demoUsh and destroy the noblest Govern- 
ment that has ever existed among men ? For 
what? Not certainly for any evil we have 
done ; for, as I said to start with, you are more 
prosperous now than you ever were before. 
What are our principles ? Our principles are 
only these : we hold that you shall limit slavery. 
Believing it wrong, believing it inconsistent 
with the best interests of the people, we de- 
mand that it shall be limited ; and this limita- 



13 



tion is not hard upon you, because you have 
land enough for a population as large as Europe, 
and century after century must roll away before 
you can occupy what you now have. The 
next thing which we hold, and which I have 
not time to discuss, is the great principle of the 
homestead bill — a measure that will be up, I 
tiust, this session, and which I shall ask to 
press through, as the greatest measure I know 
of to mould in the right direction the Territo- 
ries belonging to this nation ; to build up a free 
yeomanry capable of maintaining an indepen- 
dent republican G-overnment forever. We 
demand, also, that there shall be a protection 
to our own labor against the pauper labor of 
Europe. We have always contended for it, 
but you have always stricken it down. 

These are the measures, and these are the 
only measures, I know of that the great Re- 
pubHcan party now stand forth as the advocates 
of. L« there anything repulsive or wrong about 
tiiem ? You may not agree to them ; you may 
differ as to our views ; but is there anything in 
them that should make traitors of us, that 
should lead a man to pull down the pillars of 
his G-overnment, and bury it up, in case we 
succeed? Sir, these principles for which we 
contend are as old as the G-overnment itself. 
They stand upon the very foundation of those 
who framed your Constitution. They are 
rational and right; they are the concessions 
that ought to be made to Northern labor 
against you, who have monopohzed four mil- 
lions of compulsory labor and uncompensated 
labor, in competition with us. 

There is one thing more that I will say before 
I sit down ; but what I am now about to pro- 
pose is not part and parcel of the Republican 
platform, that I know of. There is in these 
United States a race of men who are poor, 
weak, uninfluential, incapable of taking care 
of themselves. I mean the free negroes, who 
are despised by all, repudiated by all ; outcasts 
upon the face of the earth, without any fault 
of theirs, that I know of; but they are the 
victims of a deep-rooted prejudice, and I do 
not stand here to argue whether that prejudice 
be right or wrong. I know such to be the fact. 
It is there immovable. It is perfectly impos- 
sible that these two races can inhabit the same 
place, and be prosperous and happy. I see 
that this species of population are just as 
abhorrent to the Southern States, and perhaps 



more so, than to the North; many of those 
States are now, as I think, passing most unjust 
laws to drive these men off or to subject them 
to slavery ; they are flocking into the free 
States, and we have objections to them. . Now, 
the proposition is, that this great Government 
owes it to justice, owes it to those individuals, 
owes it to itself and to the free white popula- 
tion of the nation, to provide a means whereby 
this class of unfortunate men may emigrate to 
some congenial chme, where they may be main- 
tained, to the mutual benefit of all, both white 
and black. This will insure a separation of the 
races. Let them go into the tropics. There, 
I understand, are vast tracts of the most fertile 
and inviting land, in a climate perfectly con- 
genial to that class of men, where the negro 
will be predominant ; where his nature seems 
to be improved, and all his faculties, both men- 
tal and physical, are fully developed, and where 
the white man degenerates in the same propor- 
tion as the black man prospers. Let them go 
there ; let them be separated ; it is easy to do 
it. I understand that negotiations may easily 
be effected with many of the Central American 
States, by which they will take these people, 
and confer upon them homesteads, confer upon 
them great privileges, if they wiU settle there. 
They are so easy of access that, a nucleus being 
formed, they will go of themselves and relieve 
us of the burden. They wiU be so far removed 
from us that they cannot form a disturbing ele- 
ment in our pohtical economy. The far-reach- 
ing sagacity of Thomas Jefferson and others 
suggested this plan. Nobody that I know of 
has found a better. I understand, too, that in 
these regions, to which I would let them go, 
there is no prejudice against them. All colors 
seem there to hve in common, and they would 
be glad that these men should go among them. 
I say that 1 hope this great principle will be 
engrafted into our platform as a fundamental 
article of our faith, for I hold that the G-overn- 
ment that fails to defend and secure any such 
dependent class of freemen in the possession 
of life, liberty, and happiness, is to that extent 
a tyranny and despotism. I hope, after that 
is done, to hear no more about negro equahty 
or anything of that kind. Sir, we shall be as 
glad to rid ourselves of these people, if we can 
do it consistently with justice, as anybody else 
can. We will not, however, perpetrate injus- 
tice against them. We will not drive them 
out, but we will use every inducement to per- 



14 



suade these unfortunate men to find a home 
there, so as to separate the races, and all will 
go better than it can under any other system 
that we can devise. I say again, I hope that 
the demands of justice and good poUcy will be 
compUed with ; and by the consent of all, this 



will be done ; and if it is not done with the 
assent of all, I do hope it will be part and 
parcel of the great Repubhcan platform ; for I 
think it consists with right, with justice, and 
with a proper regard for the welfare of these 
unfortunate men. 



LETTEE OF HON. JAMES 0. PUTNAM. 



The following Letter is from one of the most intelligent and influential members of 
the American Party — late a distinguished Senator of this State, and the American can- 
didate for Secretary of State in 1857 : 



Fredonia, July 13, 1860. 

Gentlemen : Engagements already made for 
the ensuing week prevent my acceptance of 
your invitation to attend and address a mass 
meeting at Union Park on the 16th inst. of citi- 
zens, irrespective of party, who believe that the 
prosperity of our Union will be advanced by 
the election of Lincoln to the Presidency. 

You say it is to be more particularly under 
the auspices of gentlemen, " many of whom 
have heretofore supported Henry Clay and 
Millard Fillmore, and are not now connected 
with any political organization." 

To meet with and confer with those who 
have always acted as I have, with the conser- 
vative school, prepared to follow where duty 
and patriotism lead, whether under a Clay, a 
Fillmore or a Lincoln, or whomsoever the time 
shall designate, would afford me great pleasure. 

You will allow me to refer briefly to our 
past pohtical history. 

The friends of Mr. Clay, who sustained the 
Compromise measures of 1850, naturally yielded 
their support to Mr. Fillmore in 1856, whose 
administration was distinguished for its fidelity 
to those measures. Not that they necessarily 
preferred the disposition made of that series of 
questions to some other, had such other been 
possible, but they accepted them as, under the 
circumstances, best calculated to give repose to 
a distracted country. They believed it was 
best to give and take — to win peace among 
brethren by concession, rather than to force it 
by conquest. 

We saw the storm of opposition to that set- 
tlement fast yielding to the general conviction 



that, on the whole, it was wisest and best, and 
the country congratulated itself on a "final 
settlement" of the Slavery question. 

In an evil hour, Stephen A. Douglas opened 
the question afresh, and plunged us into that 
sea of troubles in which we have been wan- 
dering, rayless and pathless, and at times hope- 
less, for the past six years. The Missouri Com- 
promise, the great achievement of Mr, Clay's 
life — a compact which had all the sacredness 
of a constitutional obHgation — a compact cher- 
ished in the hearts of twenty millions of Amer- 
ican citizens as a new charter of humanity — 
was trodden under foot as a worthless thing, 
and civil war invoked to settle anew the ques- 
tion of free or servile labor in the Territories. 

And now the author of all this harvest of 
mischief asks a grateful country to reward 
him with the highest trust in its gift ! 

" Conservative" men must find positions in 
some of the organizations which now ask their 
alliance, and there is a wide latitude for choice. 
I know nothing in the Republican party which 
turns a " Conservative," whether he be such 
from temperament or education, into an Abo- 
htionist, a Disunionist, or a hater of his breth- 
ren. " Friends of Mr. Clay and Mr. Fillmore," 
to use the language of your letter, have never 
had much sympathy with any branch of the 
Democratic party. They saw it calumniate 
Mr. Clay down to the grave from the time of 
the election in 1824. He was ever the target 
for all their hunters, and he went into his grave 
covered with their poisoned arrows. He was 
hardly at rest in his tomb before it undid the 
most glorious act of his Hfe. 

From my stand-point, I cannot see how any 



15 



friend of Mr. Ciay can vote for either of the 
Democratic candidates. 

Where then shall we go ? Two paths are 
open before us. We can support Mr. Lincoln, 
and seek to inaugurate a Republican pohcy in 
the Government, under his auspices, or we can 
support Mr. BeU. Now, gentlemen, I yield 
my unqualified assent to every eulogium that 
has been pronounced on Mr. Bell and Mr. 
Everett. Their names are synonyms of every 
pubhc and private virtue. The republic has no 
worthier men. But this fact stares us in the 
face: In them, able and worthy as they are, 
the hour and the men for success do not meet. 
Nobody beheves, no sane or insane man pre- 
tends, that in the State of New York they can 
command a tenth of the popular vote. A vote 
for them in any Northern State is a vote thrown 
away. If I lived in a Southern State, where 
a Lincoln ticket is not in the field, I would give 
my best energies to the Baltimore Union ticket. 
And if a Lincoln ticket were in the field, but 
only nominally so, where to support it would 
be practical neutrahty in the contest, then I 
would vote for Bell and Everett, as the best 
thing I could do to defeat the Democracy, and 
as eminently fitting and proper in itself. 

But here we can do an efl&cient, and a fitting 
and proper service, only by a support of Lin- 
coln. And yet, strange to say, there are men, 
once "friends of Clay and Fillmore," who ad- 
vise a support of Douglas, if necessary to defeat 
Lincoln in New York — not to do Douglas any 
service, but to defeat an election by the Col- 
lege, and throw it into Congress. 

The friends of Breckenridge are looking to 
the same result to take the election over the 
House to the Senate, where less than fifty men 
may make a President of Lane for thirty mil- 
hons. 

All interests are proposing to make a com- 
mon fight against Lincoln, that the Presidency 
may be scrambled for in the Congressional 
ring. 

If our "Union" firiends shall succeed, and 
catch a President in Lane by their pains, they 
will learn by experience a lesson I will learn 
at a cheaper rate. 

Now, let me ask, why should we not vote 
for Lincoln, and sustain the Eepublican policy ? 
First — What is that policy in regard to the 
leading issue of the day ? This and nothing 
more, as I understand it : To preserve to free- 
dom Territories now free. In other words, to 



adhere to the principles of Mr. Clay, as de- 
clared by him in his memorable speech in 1850. 
It makes no retrograde movement in aU that 
pertains to human progress. It does not pro- 
pose to interfere with Slavery in the States, 
but the contrary. It has some Abohtionists 
in its body — so had the old Whig party. But 
it is no more an AboHtion party, and from the 
strong conservative element in it, can no more 
become so than can the Baltimore Union party. 
Every hberal-minded man knows this. If it 
is sectional, because its ticket is made from the 
North, and its main support is in the North, the 
responsibihty of this hes at the door of the De- 
mocratic party, for it has estabhshed a reign of 
terror all over the South which renders it unsafe 
for men to co-operate with the organization. 

Now who, and what, is Mr. Lincoln, that 
Conservative men should shrink fi:om him as 
from contagion? I have read him carefully, 
and have not been able to find a sentiment in 
all his firank, unreserved discussions, which 
does not accord with what Mr. Clay has uttered 
over and over again. He is opposed to making 
free territory slave. So was Mr. Clay. He 
looks hopefully to the extinction of the insti- 
tution, and the substitution of a more humane 
and just relation of labor to capital, and that 
by the parties interested, and in lawful and 
proper ways. So did Mr, Clay. He is no fa- 
natic, bawhng after equal social and political 
rights for the negro with the white race. Read 
his debate with Senator Douglas for the most 
sound and common sense views on all this class 
of questions. He does believe the negro to be 
a man, and not a thing, and that the broad 
humanity of our Declaration of Independence, 
which declares that all men are entitled to 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as 
the free gift of G-od, is a universal principle as 
good at the tropics as in the temperate latitudes. 
Did Mr. Clay think otherwise ? I see nothing 
in Mr. Lincoln's political character which repels 
fi:om his support. 

In his personal character I find much that 
is attractive. It is the universal testimony, it 
comes from political foe and friend alike, who 
know him, that he has kept his heart sound in 
all his life-battle. So pre-eminent is his integ- 
rity, so deep-rooted is his justice in public con- 
fidence, that his familiar appellation is a sobri- 
quet indicative of that confidence. 

Few men win this in any country. Aristi- 
des did, and he was banished from his country 
because he was "honest." 

We are not immaculate, but I do not believe 
we are yet prepared to banish our Aristides 
because he is called " the Just." 
Yery respectfully, 

JAMES 0. PUTNAM. 



EVENING JOTIKNAL TRACTS.-No. 10- 



The Baebaeism of Slayeey. 



MR. MADISON THOUGHT IT ^VROIVCJ TO ADMIT IN THE CONSTITUTION THE IDEA 
PROPERTY IN MEN.— Debates in the Federal Convention, 25th August, 1787. 



OF 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. CHARLES SDMNEE, 



ON THE 



Bill for the Admission of Kansas as a Free State. 



In the United States Senate, June 4, 1860. 



Mr. President : Undertaking now, after a 
silence of more than four years, to address the 
Senate on this important subject, I should sup- 
press the emotions natural to such an occasion, 
if I did not declare on the threshold my grati- 
tude to that Supreme 'Being, through whose 
benign care I am enabled, after much suffering 
and many changes, once again to resume my 
duties here, 'and to speak for tlie cause which is 
so near my heart. To the honored Common- 
wealth whose representative I am, and also to my 
immediate associates in this body, with whom I 
enjoy the fellowship which is found i?i thinking 
alike concerning the Republic, I owe thanks which 
I seize this moment to express for the indulgence 
shown me throughout the protracted seclusion 
enjoined by medical skill ; and I trust that it will 
not be thought unbecoming in me to put on rec- 
ord here, as an apology for leaving my seat so 
long vacant, without making way, by resigna- 
tion, for a successor, that I acted under the illu- 
sion of an invalid, whose hopes for restoration 
to his natural health constantly triumphed over 
his disappointments. 

When last I entered into this debate, it became 
my duty to expose the Crime against Kansas, and 
to insist upon the immediate admission of that 
Territory as a State of this Union, with a Consti- 
tution forbidding Slavery. Time has passed ; 
but the question remains. Resuming the discus- 
sion precisely where I left it, I am happy to avow 
that rule of moderation, which, it is said, may 
venture even to fix the boundaries of wisdom 
itself. I have no personal griefs to utter ; only a 
barbarous egotism could intrude these into this 
chamber, 1 have no personal wrongs to avenge ; 
only a barbarous nature could attempt to wield 



that vengeance which belongs to the Lord. The 
years that have intervened and the tombs that 
have been opened since I spoke have their voices 
too, which I cannot fail to hear. Besides, what 
am I — what is any man among the living or 
among the dead, compared with the Question be- 
fore us ? It is this alone which I shall discuss, 
and I open the argument with that easy victory 
which is found in charity. 

The Crime against Kansas stands forth in pain- 
ful light. Search history, and you cannot find 
its parallel. The slave-trade is bad ; but ev(jn 
this enormity is petty, compared with that elab- 
orate contrivanee by which, in a Christian age 
and within the limits of a Republic, all forms of 
constitutional liberty were perverted ; by which, 
all the rights of human nature were violated, and 
the whole country was held trembling on the 
edge of civil war ; while all this large exuberance 
of wickedness, detestable in itself, becomes ten- 
fold more detestable when its origin is traced to 
the madness for Slavery. The fatal partition be- 
tween Freedom and Slavery, known as the Mis- 
souri Compromise ; the subsequent overthrow 
of this partition, and the seizure of all by Slave- 
ry ; the violation of plighted faith ; the conspi- 
racy to force Slavery at all hazards into Kansas ; 
the successive invasions by which all security 
there was destroyed, and the electoral franchise 
itself was trodden down ; the sacrilegious seizure 
of the very polls, and, through pretended forms 
of law, the imposition of a foreign legislature 
upon this Territory ; the acts of this legislature, 
fortifying the Usurpation, and, among other 
things, establishing test-oaths, calculated to dis- 
franchise actual settlers, friendly to Freedom, and 
securing the privileges of the citizen to actual 



OR Sale at the Office of the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Single Co;py, 2o. ; 
PER Dozen Copies, 20c.; per Hundred, |1; per Thousand, $8. 



strangers friendly to Slavery ; the whole crowned 
by a statute — " the be-all and the end-all " of 
the whole Usurpation — through which Slavery 
was not only recognized on this beautiful soil, 
but made to bristle with a Code of Death such as 
the world has rarely seen ; all tliese I have fully 
exposed on a foi-mer occasion. And yet the most 
important part of the argument was at that time 
left untouched ; I mean that which is found in 
Character of Slavery. This natural sequel, with 
the permission of the Senate, I propose now to 
supply. 

Motive is to Crime as soul to body ; and it is 
. only when we comprehend the motive that we 
can truly compreliend the Crime. Here, the 
motive is found in Slavery and the rage for its 
extension. Therefore, by logical necessity, must 
Slavery be discussed; not indirectly, timidly, 
and sparingly, but directly, openly, and thor- 
oughly. It must be exhibited as it is ; alike in its 
inliuence and in its animating character, so that 
not only its outside but its inside may be seen. 

This is no time for soft words or excuses. All 
such are out of place. They may turn away 
wrath ; but what is the wrath of man ? This is no 
time to abandon any advantage in the argument. 
Senators sometimes announce that they resist 
Slavery on political grounds only, and remind us 
that they say nothing of the moral question. 
This is wrong. Slavery must be resisted not only 
on political grounds ; but on all other grounds, 
whether social, economical, or moral. Ours is 
no holiday contest; nor is it any strife of rival 
fu-ctions ; of White and Red Roses ; of theatric 
Neri and Bianchi ; but it is a solemn battle be- 
tween Right and Wrong; between Good and 
Evil. Such a battle cannot be fought with ex- 
cuses or with rose-water. There is austere work 
to be done, and Freedom cannot consent to liiug 
away any of her weapons. 

If I were disposed to shrink from this discus- 
sion, the boundless assumptions now made by 
Senators on the other side would not allow me. 
The whole character of Slavery as a pretended 
form of civilization is put directly in issue, with 
a pertinacity and a hardihood which banish all 
reserve on this side. In these assumptions, Sen- 
ators from South Carolina naturally take the 
lead. Following Mr. Calhoun, who pronounced 
*' Slavery the most safe and stable basis for free 
institutions in the world," and Mr. McDuffie, who 
did not shrink from calling it "the corner-stone 
of the republican edifice," the Senator from South 
Carolina [Mr. Hammond] insists that " its forms 
of society are the best in the world;" and his 
colleague [Mr. Chksnut] takes up the strain. 
One Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis] adds, 
that Slavery "is but a form of civil government 
for those who are not fit to govern themselves ;" 
and his colleague [Mr. Browx] openly vaunts 
that it "is a great moral, social, and political 
blessing — a blessing to the slave and a blessing to 
the master." One Senator from Virginia, [Mr. 
Hunter,] in a studied vindication of what he is 
pleased to call "the social system of the slave- 
holding States," exalts Slavery as " the normal 
condition of human society ;" " beneficial to the 
non-slave-owner as it is to the slave-owner" — 
" best for the happiness of both races ;" and, in 
enthusiastic advocacy, declares, "that the very 
keystone of the mighty arch, which by its con- 
centrated strength is able to sustain our social 
superstructure, consists in the black marble block 



of African slavery. Knock that out," he says, 
" and the mighty fabric, with all that it upholds, 
topples and tumbles to its fall." These were his 
very words, uttered in debate here. And his 
colleague, [Mr. Mason,] who has never hesitated 
where Slavery was in question, has proclaimed 
that it is " ennobling to both master and slave '* 
— a word which, so far as the slave was concerned, 
he changed, on a subsequent day, to *' elevating," 
assuming still that it is " ennobling " to the mas- 
ter — which is simply a new version of an old 
assumption, by Mr. McDuffie, of South Carolina, 
that " Slavery supersedes the necessity of an or- 
der of nobility." 

Thus, by various voices, is the claim made for 
Slavery, which is put forward defiantly as a form 
of civilization — as if its existence were not plainly 
inconsistent ^vith the first principles of anything 
that can be called Civilization — except by that 
figure of speech in classical literature, where a 
thing takes its name from something which it has 
not, as the dreadful Fates were called merciful 
because they were without mercy. And pardon 
the allusion, if I add, that, listening to these 
sounding words for Slavery, I am reminded of 
the kindred extravagance related by that remark- 
able traveler in China, the late Abbe Hue, of a 
gloomy hole in which he was lodged, pestered by 
mosquitoes and exhaling noisome vapors, where 
light and air entered only by a single narrow 
aperture, but styled by Chinese pride the Hotel of 
the Beatitudes. 

It is natural that Senators thus insensible to 
the true character of Slavery, should evince an 
equal itisensibility to the true character of the 
Constitution. This is shown in the claim now 
made, and pressed with unprecedented energy, 
degrading the work of our fathers, that by virtue 
of the Constitution, the pretended property in 
man is placed beyond the reach of Congressional 
proliibition even within Congressional jurisdic- 
tion, so that the Slave-master may at all times 
enter the broad outlying Territories of the Union 
with the victims of his oppression, and there 
continue to hold them by lash and chain. 

Such are the two assumptions, the first an as- 
sumption of fact, and the second an assumption 
of constitutional law, which are now made with- 
out apology or hesitation. I meet them both. 
To the first I oppose the essential Barbarism of 
Slavery, in all its influences, whether high or low, 
as Satan is Satan still, whether towering in the 
sky or squatting in the toad. To the second I 
oppose the unanswerable, irresistible truth, that 
the Constitution of the United States nowhere 
recognises property in man. These two assump- 
tions naturally go together. They are "twins" 
suckled by the same wolf. They are the "cou- 
ple" in the present slave hunt. And the latter 
cannot be answered without exposing tlie former. 
It is only when Slavery is exhibited in its truly 
hateful character, that we can fully appreciate the 
absurdity of the assumption, which, in defiance 
of the express letter of the Constitution, and 
without a single sentence, phrase, or word, up- 
holding human bondage, yet foisis into this 
blameless text the barbarous idea that man can 
hold property in man. 

On former occasions, I have discussed Slavery 
only incidentally ; as, in unfolding the principle 
that Slavery is Sectional and Freedom National ; 
in exposing the unconstitutionality of the Fugi- 
tive Slave Bill ; in vindicating the Prohibition of 



Slavery in the Missouri Territory ; in exhibiting 
the imbecility throughout the Revohition of the 
Slave Stxites, and especially of South Carolina ; 
and lastly, in unmasking the Crime against Kan- 
sas. On all these occasions, wliere I have spoken 
at length, I have said too little of the character 
of Slavery, partly because other topics were pre- 
sented, and partly from a disinclination which I 
have always felt to press the argument against 
those whonf I knew to have all the sensitiveness 
of a sick man. But, God be praised, this time 
has passed, and the debate is now lifted from de- 
tails to principles. Grander debate has not occur- 
red in our history ; riirely in any bisLory ; nor 
can this debate close or subside except vdih the 
triumph of Freedom. 

First Assumption. — Of course I begin with the 
assumption of fact. 

It was the often-quoted remark of John Wes- 
ley, who knew well how to use words, as also 
how to touch hearts, that Slavery was " the sum 
of all villainies." The phrase is pungent; but 
it would be rash in any of us to criticize tlie tes- 
timony of that illustrious founder of Methodism, 
whose ample experience of Slavery in Georgia 
and the Carolinas seems to have been all con- 
densHd in this sententious judgment. Language 
is feeble to express all the enormity of this insti- 
tution, which is now vaunted as in itself a form of 
civilization, " ennobling " at least to the master, 
if not to the slave. Look at it in whatever light 
you will, and it is always the scab, the canker, 
the " bare-bones," and the shame of the coun 
try ; wrong, not merely in the abstract, as is often 
admitted by its apologists, but Avron.g in the con- 
crete also, and possessing no single element of 
right. Look at it in the light of principles, and 
it is nothing less than a huge insurrection against 
the eternal law of God, involving in its preten- 
sions the denial of all human I'ights, and also the 
denial of that Divine Law in which God himself 
is manifest, thus being practically' the grossest lie 
and the grossest Atheism. Founded in violence, 
sustained only by violence, such a wrong must 
by a sure law of compensation blast the mas- 
ter as well as the slave ; blast the lands on 
which they live ; blast the community of which 
the}- are a part ; blast the Government which 
does not forbid the outrage ; and the longer 
it exists and the more completely it prevails, 
must its blasting influences penetrate the whole 
social system. Barbarous in origin; barbarous 
in its law ; barbarous in all its pretensions ; 
barbarous in the instruments it employs ; bar- 
barous in consequences ; barbarous in spirit ; 
barbarous wherever it shows itself, Slavery must 
breed Barbarians, wliile it develops everywhere, 
alike m the individual and in the society to which 
he belongs, the essential elements of Barbarism. 
In this character it is now conspicuous before the 
world. 

In undertaking now to expose the Barbarism 
OP Slavery, the whole broad field is open before 
me. There is nothuig in it£ character, its mani- 
fold wrong, its wretched results, and especially 
in its influence on the class who claim to be 
'* eimobled " by it, that will not fall naturally 
uaider consideration. 

I know well the difficulty of this discussion 
involved in the humiliating Truth with which I 
begin. Senators on former occasions, revealing 
their sensibility, have even protested against any 



comparison between what were called the " two 
civilizations," meanin.g the two social systems 
produced respectively by Freedom and by Slave- 
ry. The sensibility and the protest are not un- 
natural, though mistaken. " Two civilizations !" 
Sir, in this nmeteenth century of Christian light, 
there can be but one Civilization, and tliis is 
where Freedom prevails. Between Slavery and 
Civilization there is an essential uicompatibility. 
If you are for the one, you cannot be for the 
other ; and just in proportion to the embrace of 
Slavery is the divorce from Civilization. That 
Slave-masters should be disturbed when this is 
exposed, might be expected. But the ossump- 
tions now so boastfully made, while they may 
not prevent the sensibility, yet surely exclude all 
ground of protest when these assumptions are 
exposed. 

JN'or is this the only difficulty Slavery is a 
bloody Touch-me-not, and everywhere in sight 
now blooms the bloody flower. It is on the way 
side as we approach the national capital ; it is on 
the marble steps which we mount ; it flaunts on 
this floor. I stand now in the house of its 
friends. About me while I speak are its most 
sensitive guardians, who have shown in the past 
how much they are ready either to do or not to 
do where Slavery is in question. Menaces to 
deter me have not been spared. But 1 should ill 
deserve this high post of duty here, with which 
I have been honored by a generous and enlight- 
ened people, if I could hesitate. Idolatry has 
been often exposed in the presence of idolaters, 
and hypocrisy has been chastised in the presence 
of Scribes and Pharisees. Such examples may 
give encouragement to a Senator who undertakes 
in this presence to expose Slavery ; nor can any 
language, directly responsive to the assumptions 
now made for this Barbarism, be open to ques- 
tion. Slavery can only be painted in the stern- 
est colors ; but I cannot forget that nature's 
sternest painter has been called the best. 

The Barbarism of Slavery appears ; frst in 
the character of Sla-very, and secondly in the 
character of Slave-masters. Under the first head 
we shall naturally consider (1) the Law of Slavery 
and its Origin, and (2) the practical results of 
Slavery as shown in a comparison between the 
Free States and the Slave States. Under the 
secow(^ head we shall naturally consider (1) Slave- 
masters as shown in the Law of Slavery ; (2) 
Slave-masters in their relations with slaves, here 
glancing at their three brutal instruments ; and 

(3) Slave-masters in their relations with each 
otlier, with society, and with Government; and 

(4) Slave-masters in their unconsciousness. 

The way will then be prepared for the con- 
sideration of the assumption of constitutional 
law. 

I. In presenting the Character of Slavery, 
there is liitle for me to do, except to allow Slave- 
ry to paint itself. When this is done, the pic- 
ture will need no explanatory words. 

(1.) I begin with the Law of Slavery and its 
Origin, and here this Barbarism paints itself in 
its own chosen definition. It is simply this: 
Man, created in the image of God, is divested of 
his human character, and declared to be a '* chat- 
tel " — that is, a beast, a tlung or article of prop- 
erty. That this statement may not seem to be 
put forward without precise authority, I quote 



the statutes of three different State??, beginning 
with South Carolina, whose voice for Slavery 
always has an unerring distinctiveness. Here is 
the definition supplied by this State : 

"Slaves shall be deemed, held, taken, reputed, and ad- 
judged in law, to be chattels pcrso7ialmihehi\x\dsof ihcir 
owners and possessors and their executors, administrators, 
and assigns, to all intents, constructions, and purposes 
■whatsoever."— 2 Brev. Big., 229. 

And here is the definition supplied by the Civil 
Code of Louisiana : 

" A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom 
he belongs. The master may sell him, dispose of his per- 
son, his industry, and his labor. He can do nothing, pos- 
sess nothing, nor acquire anything, but what must belong 
to his master."— C?x;z7 Code, art. -35. 

In similar spirit, the law of Maryland thus 
indirectly defines a slave as :in article : 

" In case the personal property of a ward shall consist 
of specific articles, such as slaves, working beasts, animals 
of any kind, the court, if it deem it advantageous for the 
ward, may at any time pass an order fur the sale thereof." 
— Statutes of Maryland. 

Not to occupy time unnecessarily, I present a 
summary of the pretended law defining Slavery 
in all the Slavw States, as made by a careful 
writer. Judge Stroud, in a work of judicial as 
well as philanthropic merit ; 

"The cardinal principle of Slaverj- — that the s'aveis not 
to be ranked among sentient being.i, but among fhiiigs— 
is an article of property — a chattel personal — obtains as 
undoubted law in ail of these L^luve, States.''^— Stroud's 
Law of Slavery, p. 22. 

Out of this definition, as from a solitary germ, 
which in its pettiness might be crushed by the 
hand, towers our Upus Tree and all its gigantic 
poison. Study it, and you will comprehend the 
whole monstrous growth. 

Sir, look at its plain import, and see the rela- 
tion which it establishes. Tli<e slave is held sim- 
ply/or the use of his mcistcr, to whose behests, 
his life, liberty, and happiness, are devoted, and 
by whom he may be bartered, leased, mortgaged, 
bequeathed, invoiced, shipped as cargo, stored as 
goods, sold on execution, knocked off at public 
auction, and even staked at the gaming table on 
the hazard of a card or a die; all according to 
law. Nor is there anything, within the limit of 
life, inflicted on a beast which may not be in- 
flicted on the slave. He may be marked like a 
hog, branded like a mule, yoked like an ox, hob- 
bled like a horse, driven like an ass. sheared like 
a sheep, maimed like a cur, and constantly beaten 
like a brute ; all according to law. And shoiild 
life itself be taken, what is the remedy? The 
Law of Slavery, imitating that rule of evidence 
which, in barbarous days and barbarous coun- 
tries, prevented a Christian from testifying against 
a Mahomedan, openly pronounces the incompe- 
tency of the whole African race — whether bond 
or free — to testify in any case against a white 
man, and, thus having already surrendered the 
slave to all possible outrage, crowns its tyranny, 
by excluding the very testimony through which 
the bloody cruelty of the Slave-master might be 
exposed. 

Thus in its Law does Slavery paint itself; but 
it is only when we look at details, and detect its 
essential elements— ^^ve in number — all inspired 
by a single motive, that its character becomes 
■completely manifest. 

Foremost, of course, in these elements, is the 
impossible pretension, where Barbarism is lost 



in impiety, by which man claims property in 
m,an. Against such arrogance the argument is 
brief. According to the law of nature, written 
by the same hand that placed the planets in their 
orbits, and like them, constituting a part of the 
eternal system of the Universe, every human 
being has a complete title to himself direct from 
the Almighty. Naked he is born ; but this birth- 
right is inseparable from the human form. A 
man may be poor in this world's goods ; but he 
owns himself. No war or robbery, ancient or 
recent ; no capture ; nO middle passage ; no 
change of clime ; no purchase money ; no trans- 
mission from hand to hand, no matter how many 
times, and no matter at what price, can defeat 
this indefeasible God-given franchise. And a 
Divine mandate, strong as that which guards 
Lil'e, guards Liberty also. Even at the very 
morning of Creation, w'hen God said, let thei-e 
be light — earlier than the malediction against 
murdei- — He set an everlasting difference between 
man and a chattel, giving to man dominion over 
the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
and over every living thing that moveth upon 
the earth : 

that right we hold 

By His donation ; but man over men 
He made not lord, such title to Himself 
Eeserving, human left from human free. 

Slavery tyrannically assumes a power which 
Heaven denied, while, under its barbarous necro- 
mancy, borrowed from the Source of Evil, a man 
is changed into a chattel — a person is withered 
into a tiling — a soul is shrunk into merchandise. 
Say, sir, in your madness, that you own the sun, 
the stars, the moon ; but do not say that you 
own a man, endowed with a soul that shall live 
immortal, when sun and moon and stars have 
passed away. 

Secondly. Slavery paints itself again in its com- 
plete abrogation of marriage, recognised as a 
sacrament by the church, and recognised as a 
contract wherever civilization prevails. Under 
the law of Slavery, no such sacrament is respect- 
ed, and no such contract can exist. The ties that 
may be formed between slaves are all subject to 
the selfish interests or more selfish lust of the 
master, whose license knows no check. Natural 
affections which have come together are rudely 
torn asunder ; nor is this all. Stripped of every 
defence, the chastity of a whole race is exposed 
to violence, while the result is recorded in the 
tell-tale faces of children, glowing with their 
master's blood, but doomed for their mother's 
skin to Slavery, through all descending genera- 
tions. Thn- Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Ekown] 
is galled by the comparison between Slavery and 
Polygamy, and winces. I hail this sensibility as 
the sign of virtue. Let him reflect, and he will 
confess, that there are many disgusting elements 
in Slavery, which are not present in Polygamy, 
while the single disgusting element of Polygamy 
ii,' more than present in Slavery, By the license 
of Polygamy, one may have many wives, all 
bound to him by the marriage tie, and in other 
respects protected by law. By the license of 
Slavery, a whole race is delivered over to prosti- 
tution and concubinage, without the protection 
of any law. Sir, is not Slavery barbarous ? 

Thirdly. Slavery paints itself again in its 
complete abrogation of the parental relation, 
which God in his benevolence has provided for 
the nurture and education of the human family, 



and which constitutes an essential part of Civili- 
zation itself. And yet, by the law of Slavery — 
happily beginning to be modified in some places 
— this relation is set at naught, and in its place is 
substituted the arbitrary control of the master, at 
whose mere command little children, such as the 
Saviour called unto him, though clasped by a 
mother's arms, may be swept under the hammer 
of the auctioneer. I do not dwell on this exhi- 
bition. Sir, is not Slavery barbarous ? 

Fourthly. Slavery paints itself again in closing 
the gates of knowledge, which are also the shining 
gates of civilization. Under its plain unequivo- 
cal law, the bondman may, at the unrestrained 
will of his master, be shut out from all instruc- 
tion, while in many places, incredible to relate ! 
the law itself, by cumulative provisions, posi- 
tively forbids that he shall be taught to read. 
Of course, the slave cannot be allowed to read, 
for his soul would then expand in larger air, 
while he saw the glory of the North Star, and 
also the helping tnith, that God, who made iron, 
never made a slave ; for he would then become 
familiar with the Scriptures, with the Decalogue 
still speaking in the thunders of Sinai ; with 
that ancient text, " He that stealeth a man and 
selleth him, or if he be found in his hands, he 
shall surely be put to death;" with that other 
text, '* Masters, give unto your servants that 
which is just and equal ;" with that great story 
of redemption, when the Lord raised the slave- 
born Moses to deliver his chosen people from the 
house of bondage ; and with that .subiimer story, 
where the Saviour died a cruel death, that all 
men, without distinction of race, might be saved 
— leaving to mankind commandments, which, 
even without his example, make Slavery impos- 
sible. Thus, in order to fasten your manacles 
upon the slave, you fasten other manacles upon 
his soul. Sir, is not Slavery barbarous ? 

Fifthly. Slavery paints itself again in the ap- 
'propriatioyi of all the toil of its victims, exclud- 
ing them from that property in their own earn- 
ings, which the law of nature allows, and civili- 
zation secures. The painful injustice of this 
pretension is lost in its meanness. It is robbery 
and petty larceny under the garb of law. And 
even its meanness is lost in the absurdity of its 
associate pretension, that the African, thus de- 
spoiled of all his earnings, is saved from poverty, 
and that for his own good he must work for his 
master, and not for himself. Alas ! by such a 
fallacy, is a whole race pauperized ! And yet 
this transaction is not without illustrative exam- 
ple. A solemn poet, whose verse has found wide 
favor, pictures a creature who, 

With one haad put 

A penny in the urn of povert\% 
And with the other took a shilling out, 
Pollok's " Course of l^nie.;' Book VIII, 632. 

And a celebrated traveller through Russia, more 
than a generation ago, describes a kindred spirit, 
who, while on his knees before an aliar of the 
Greek Church, devoutly told lils beads with one 
hand, and with the other deliberately picked the 
pocket of a fellow-sinner by his side, Not ad- 
miring these instances, I cannot cease to deplore 
a system which has much of both, while, under 
an affectation of charity, it sordidly takes from 
the slave all the fruits' of his bitter sweat, and 
thus takes from him the mainspring to exertion. 
Tell me, sir, is not Slavery barbarous 1 



Such is Slavery in its five special elements of 
Barbarism, as recognised by law ; first, assuming 
that man can hold property in man ; secondly, 
abrogating the relation of husband and wife ; 
thirdly, abrogating the parental tie ; fourthly, 
closing the gates of knowledge ; and fifthly, ap- 
propriating the unpaid labor of another. Take 
away these elements, sometimes called " abuses," 
and Slavery will cease to exist, for it is these 
very " abuses " which constitute Slavery. Take 
away any one of them, and the abolition of Slave- 
ry begins. And when I present Slavery for judg- 
ment, I mean no slight evil, with regard to which 
there may be a reasonable difference of opinion, 
but I mean this five-fold embodiment of '■ abuse '* 
— this ghastly quincunx of Barbarism — each par- 
ticular of which, if considered separately, must 
be denounced at once with all the ardor of an 
honest soul, while the whole five-fold combina- 
tion must awake a five-fold denunciation. 

But this five-fold combination becomes still 
more hateful when its single motive is considered. 
The Senator from Mississippi [Mr. Davis] says 
that it is " but a form of civil government for 
those who are not fit to govern themselves." 
The Senator is mistaken. It is an outrage where 
five different pretensions all concur in one single 
object, looking only to the profit of the master, 
and constituting its ever-present motive power, 
which is simply to compel the labor of fellow-men 
without wages I 

If the offence of Slavery were less extended ; 
if it were confined to some narrow region ; if it 
had less of grandeur in its proportions ; if its 
victims were counted by tens and hundreds, in- 
stead of millions, the five-headed enormity would 
find little indulgence. All would rise against it, 
while religion and civilization would lavish their 
choicest efforts in the general warfare. But what 
is wrong when done to one man cannot be right 
when done to many. If it is wrong thus to de- 
grade a single soul — if it is wrong thus to degrade 
you, jMr. President — it cannot be right to degrade 
a whole race. And yet this is denied by the bar- 
barous logic of Slavery, which, taking advantage 
of its own wrong, claims immunity because its 
Usurpation has assumed a front of audacity that 
cannot be safely attacked. Unhappily, there is 
Barbarism elsewhere in the world ; but Ameri- 
can Slavery, as defined by existing law, stands 
forth as the greatest organized Barbarism on 
which the sun now shines. It is without a single 
peer. Its author, after making it, broke the die. 

If curiosity carries us to the origin of this law 
— and here I approach a topic often considered 
in this Chamber — we shall confess again its Bar- 
barism. It is not derived from the common law, 
that fottntain of Liberty ; for this law, while un- 
happily recognising a system of servitude, known 
as villeinage, secured to the bondman privileges 
unknown to the Am'-rican slave; protected his 
person against mayhem ; protected his wife 
against rape ; gave to his marriage equal validity 
with the marriage of his master, and surrounded 
his offspring with generous presumptions of Free- 
dom, unlike that rule of yours by which the 
servitude of the mother is necessarily stamped 
upon the child. It is not derived from the Ro- 
man law, that fotmtain of tyranny, for two rea- 
sons — first, because this law, in its better days, 
when its early rigors were spent — like the com- 
mon law itself — secured to the bondman privi- 
leges unknown to the American slave — in certaia 



6 



cases of cruelty rescued liim from his master — 
prevented the separation of parents and children, 
also of brothers and sisters — and even protected 
him ill the marriage relation ; and secondly, be- 
cause the Thirteen Colonies were not driven from 
any of those countries wli ch recognised the Ro- 
man law, while this law, even before the dis- 
covery of this continent, had lost all living eth- 
cacy. It is not derived from the Mahomedan 
law ; for under the mild injunctions of the Koran, 
a benignant servitude, unlike yours, has prevail- 
ed — where the lash is not allowed to lacerate the 
back of a female ; where no knife or branding- 
iron is employed upon any human being to mark 
him as the property of his fellow-man ; where 
the master is expressl}' enjoined to listen to the 
desires of his slave for emancipation ; and where 
the blood of the master, mingling with his bond- 
woman, takes from her the transferable character 
of a chattel, and confers complete freedom upon 
their offspring. It is not derived from the Span- 
ish law ; for this law contains humane elements, 
unknown to your system, borrowed, perhaps, 
from the Mahomedan Moors who so long occu- 
pied Spain; and, besides, our Thirteen Colonies 
had no umbilical connection with Spain. jN'oris 
it derived from English statutes or American 
statutes ; for we have the positive and repeated 
averment of the Senator from Virginia [Mr. Ma- 
son], and also of other Senators, that in not a sin- 
gle State of the Union can any such statutes 
establishing Slavery be found. From none of 
these does it come. 

No, sir ; not from any land of civilization is 
this Barbarism derived. It comes from Africa ; 
ancient nurse of monsters ; from Gfuinea, Daho- 
mey, and Congo. There is its origin and foun- 
tain. Tliis benighted region, we are told by 
Chief Justice Marshall in a memorable judgment, 
[The Antelope, 10 Wheaton R., 66.) still asserts 
a right, discarded by Christendom, to enslave 
captives taken in war ; and this African Barbar- 
ism is the beginning of American Slavery. And 
the Supreme Court of Georgia, a Slave State, has 
not shrunk from this conclusion. " Licensed to 
hold slave property," says the Court, ''the Geor- 
gia planter held the slave as a chattel ; either di- 
rectly from the slave-trader, or from those who 
held under him, and he from the slave-captor in 
Africa. The property of the planter in the slave 
became thus, the property of the original captor." 
{Neal V. Farviei', 9 Georgia Reports, j:). 555.) It 
is natural that a right, thus derived in defiance 
of Christendom, and openly founded on the most 
vulgar Pagaiiism, should be exercised without 
any mitigating influence from Christianity ; that 
the master'is auihority over the person of his 
slave — over hh conjugal relations — over his pa- 
rental relations^— i)ver the employment of his 
time — over all his aciiuisitions. should be recog- 
nised, while no generous presumption inclines to 
Freedom, and the womb oi the boud-womiiu can 
deliver only a slave. 

From its home in Ah ica, where it is sustained 
by immemorial usage, this Barbarism, thus de- 
rived and thus developed, traversed the ocean to 
American soil. It entered on board that fatal 
slave-ship " built in the eclipse, and rigged witli 
curses dark," which in 1620 landed its cruel 
cargo at Jamestown, in Virginia, and it has boldly 
taken its place in every succeeding slave-ship 
from that early day till now — helping to pack 
the human freight, regardless of human agony ; 



surviving the torments of the middle passage ; sur- 
viving its countless victims plunged beneath the 
waves ; and it has left the slave-ship only to 
travel inseparable from the slave in his various 
doom, sanctioning by its barbarous code every 
outrage whether of mayhem or robbery, of lasli 
or lust, and fastening itself upon his offspring to 
the renu^test generation. Thus are the barbar- 
ous prerogatives of barbarous half-naked African 
chiefs perpetuated in American slave-masters, 
while the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Mason,] 
perhaps unconscious of their origin — perhaps 
desirous to secure for them the appearance of a 
less barbarous pedigree — tricks them out with a 
phrase of the Roman law, discarded by the com- 
mon \-A\s , 2iarius sequitur venirem,. which simply 
renders into ancient Latin an existing rule of 
African Barbarism, recognised as an existing rule 
of American Slavery, 

Such is the plain juridical origin of the Ameri- 
can slave code, which is now vaunted as a badge 
of Civilization. But all law, whatever may be 
its juridical origin, whether English or Mahome- 
dan, Roman or African, may be traced to other 
and ampler influences in nature, sometimes of 
Right, and sometimes of Wrong. Surely the 
law which blasted the slave-trade as piracy pun- 
ishable with death had a different inspiration 
from that other law, which secured immunity for 
the slave-trade throughout an immense territory, 
and invested its supporters with political power. 
As there is a higher law above, so there is a lower 
law below, and each is felt in human affairs. 

Thus far, we have seen Slavery only in its 
pretended law, and in the origin of that law. 
And here I might stop, without proceeding in this 
argument ; for, on the letter of the law alone 
Slavery must be condemned. But the tree is 
known by its fruits, and these I now shall ex- 
hibit ; and this bruigs me to the second stage of 
the argument. 

(2.) In considering the practical results of 
Slavery, the materials are so obvious and diver- 
sified, that my chief care will be to abiidge and 
reject ; and here I shall put the Slave States and 
Free States face to face, showing at each point the 
blasting influence of Slavery. 

The States where this Barbarism now exists 
excel the Free States in ail natural advantages. 
Their territory is more extensive, stretching over 
851,448 square miles, while the Free States, in- 
cluding California, embrace only 612,597 square 
miles. Here is a difference of more than 238,000 
square miles in favor of the Slave States, showing 
tliat Freedom starts in this great controversy, with 
a field more . than a quarter less than that of 
Slavery. In happiness of climate, adapted to 
productions of special value ; in exhaustless mo- 
tive power distributed throughout its space ; in 
natural highways, by more than fifty navigable 
rivers, never closed by the rigors of winter, and 
in a stretch of coast along ocean and gulf, indent- 
ed by hospitable harbors — the whole presentmg 
incomparable advantages for that true civilization 
where agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, 
both domestic and foreign, blend — in all these 
respects the Slave States excel the Free States, 
whose climate is often churlish, whose motive 
power is less various, whose navigable rivers are 
fewer and often sealed by ice, and whose coast, 
while less in extent and with fewer harbors, is 
often perilous from stonn and cold. 



But Slavery plays the part of a Harpy, and 
defiles the choicest banquet. See what it does 
with this territory, thus spacious and fair. 

An important indication of prosperity is to he 
found in the growth of population. In this re- 
spect the two regions started equal. In 1790, at 
the first census under the Constitution, the popu- 
lation of the present Slave States was 1.961,372, 
of the present Free States 1,968,455, showing a 
difference of only 7,083 in favor of the Free 
States. This difference, at first merely nominal, 
has been constantly iucreasing since, showing 
itself more strongly in each decennial census, 
until, in 1850, the population of the Slave States, 
swollen by the annexation of three foreign Ter- 
ritories, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas, was only 
9,612,769, while that of the Free States, without 
any such annexations, reached 13,434,922. Show- 
ing a difference of 3,822,153 in favor of Freedom. 
But this difference becomes still more remarkable, 
if we confine our inquiries to the white popula- 
tion, which, at this period, was only 6,184,477 
in the Slave States, while it was 13,238,670 in 
the Free States, showing a difference of more 
than 7,054,193 in favor of Freedom, and showing 
that the white population of the Free States had 
not only doubled bat commenced to triple that 
of the Slave States, although occupying a smaller 
territory. The comparative sparseness of the two 
populations furnishes another illustration. In 
the Slave States the average number of inhabi- 
tants to a square mile was 11.28, wluLe in the 
Free States it was 21.93, or almost two to one in 
favor of Freedom. 

These results are general ; but if we take any 
particular Slave State, and compare it with a Free 
State, we shall find the same constant evidence 
for Freedom. Take Virginia, with a territory of 
61,352 miles, and New York, with a territory of 
47,000, or over 14,000 square miles .ess than her 
sister State. New York has one sea-port, Vir- 
ginia some three or four ; New York has one 
noble river, Virginia has several ; New York for 
400 miles runs along the frozen line of Canada ; 
Virginia basks in a climate of constant felicity. 
Bat Freedom is better than climate, rivers, or 
sea-port ! 

In 1790 the population of Virginia was 748, 
308, and in 1850 it was 1,421,061. In 1790, the 
population of New York was 340,120, and in 
1850 it was 3,097,394 ; that of Virginia had not 
doubled in sixty years, while that of New York 
had multiplied more than nine-fold. A similar 
comparison may be made between Kentucky, with 
37,680 square miles, admitted into the Union as 
long ago as 1790, and Ohio with 39,964 square 
miles, admitted into the Union in 1802. In 1850 
the Slave State had a population of only 982.405, 
while Ohio had a population of 1,980,329, show- 
ing a difference of nearly a million in favor of 
Freedom, 

As in population, so also in the value of 
property, real and personal^ do the Free States 
excel the Slave States. According to the census 
of 1850, the value of property in the Free States 
was $4,107,162,198, while in the Slave States it 
was $2,936,090,73 7; or, if we deduct the assert- 
ed property in human flesh, only ^1,655,945, 
137 — showing an enormous difference of bil- 
lions in favor of Freedom, In the Free States 
the valuation per acre was $10.47, in the Slave 
States only $3.04. This disproportion was still 
greater in 1855, according to the report of the 



Secretary of the Treasury when the valuation of 
the Free States was $5,770,194,680; or $14.72 
per acre ; and of the Slave States, $3,977,353, 
946, or, if we deduct the asserted property in 
human flesh $2,f>05, 186,346, or $4,59 per acre. 
Thus, in five years from 1850, the valuation of 
property in the Free States received an increase 
of more than the whole accumulated valuation 
of the Slave States at that time. 

Looking at details, we find the same dispropor- 
tions. Arkansas and Michigan, equal in territory, 
were admitted into the Union in the same year ; 
and yet in 1855, the whole valuation of Arkansas, 
including its asserted property in human flesh, 
was only $64,240,726, while that of Michigan, 
without a single slave, was $116,593,580, The 
whole accumulated valuation of all the Slave 
States, deducting the asserted property in human 
flesh, in 1850, was only $1,655,945,137 ; but the 
valuation of New York alone, in 1855, reached 
the nearly equal sum of $1,401,285,279. The 
valuation of Virginia, North and South Carolina, 
Georgia, Florida, and Texas, all together, in 1850, 
deducting human flesh, was $573,332,860, or sim- 
ply $1.81 per acre — being less than that of Mas- 
sachusetts alone, which was $573,342,286, or 
$114.85 per acre. 

Th© Slave States boast of agriculture ; but 
here again, notwithstanding their superior nat- 
ural advantages, they must yield to the Free 
States at every point, in the number of farms 
and plantations, in the number of acres of im- 
proved lands, in the cash value of farms, in the 
average value per acre, and in the value of farm- 
ing implements and machinery. Here is ashort 
table : 

Free States. — Number of farms, 877,736 ; acres 
of improved land, 57,688,040 ; cash value of 
farms, $2,143,344,437 average value per acre, 
$19.83 ; value of farming implements, $85,736,- 
658. 

Slave States. — Number of farms, 564,203 ; acres 
of improved land, 54,970,427 ; cash value of 
farms, $1, 117,649^649 ; average value per acre, 
$6.18 ; value of farming implements, $65,345,- 
625, 

Such is the mighty contrast. But it does not 
stop here. Careful tables place the agricultural 
products of the Free States, for the year ending 
June, 1850 at $858,634,334, while those of the 
Slave States were $631,277,417; the product per 
acre in the Free States at $7.94, and the product 
per acre in the Slave States at $3.49 ; and the 
average product of each agriculturist in the Free • 
States at $342, and in the Slave States at $171. 

Thus the Free States, with a smaller popula- 
tion engaged in agriculture than the Slave States, 
with smaller territory, show an annual sum total 
of agricultural products surpassing those of the 
Slave States by two hundred and twenty-seven 
millions of dollars, while twice as much is pro- 
duced on an acre, and more than twice as much 
is produced by each agi'iculturist. The monopo- 
ly of cotton, rice, and cane sugar, with a climate 
granting two and sometimes three crops in a 
year, are thus impotent in the competition with 
Freedom. 

In manufactures, the failure of the Slave 
States is greater still. It appears at all points, iu 
the capital employed, in the value of the raw 
material, in the annual wages, and in the annual 
product, A short table will show the con- 
trast : 



8 



Free States.— C?i-^\isi\ -$480,240,051 ; value of 
raw material, $465,844.092 ; annual wages, 
$195,976,453 ; annual p odnct, $842,586,058. 

SJaxe iS'teies.— Capital, $95,029,879 ; value of 
raw material, |86,190,6?-9 ; annual wages, $33,- 
257,360 ; annual product, $165,413,027. 

This might be illustrated by details with regard 
to different manufactures — uiitther of shoes, cot- 
ton, woolen, pig iron, wrought iron, and iron 
castings — all showing the contrast. It might 
also be illustrated by a comparison between dif- 
ferent States; showing, for instance, that the 
manufactures of Massachusetts during the last 
year, exceeded those of a) 1 the Slave States com- 
bined. 

In commerce., the failure of the Slave States is 
on yet a larger scale. Under this head, the cen- 
sus does not supply proper statistics, and we are 
left, therefore, to approximations from other 
quarters; but these are enough for our purpose. 
It appears that, of the products which enter into 
commerce, the Free States had an amount valued 
at $1,377,199,968 ; the Slave States an amount 
valued only at $410,754,992 ; that of the persons 
engaged in trade, the Free States had 136,856, 
and the Slave States 52,622 ; and that of the ton- 
nage employed, the Free Slates had 2,790,195 
tons, and the Slave States only 726,285. This 
was in 1850. But in 1855 the disproijortion was 
still greater, the Free States having 4,252,615 
tons, and the Slave States 855,517 tons, being a 
difference of five to one ; and the tonnage of 
Massachusetts alone being 970,727 tons, an 
amount larger than that of all the Slave States. 
The tonnage built during this year by the Free 
States was 528,844 tons; by the Slave States, 
52,959 tons. Maine alone built 215,905 tons, or 
more than four times the whole built in the 
Slave States. 

The foreign commerce, as indicated by the ex- 
ports and imports in 1855. of the Free States, 
was $404,368,503 ; of the Slave States, $132,067,- 
216. The exports of the Free States were 
$167,520,693; of the Slave States including the 
vauntsd cotton crop, $132,007,216. The imports 
of the Free States were $236,947,810 ; of the 
Slave States, $24,586,528. The foreign commerce 
of New York alone was more than twice as large 
as that of all the Slave States ; her imports were 
larger, and her exports were larger also. Add to 
this testimony of figures the testimony of a Vir- 
ginian, Mr. Loudon, in a letter written just before 
the sitting of a Southern Commercial Conven- 
tion. Thus he complains and testifies : 

'■ There are not half a dozen vessels engaged in our own 
trade that are owned in Virginia; and I have been una- 
ble to find a vessel at Liverpool loading for Virginia with- 
in three years, during the height of our busy season." 

Railroads and canals are the avenues of com- 
merce ; and here again the Free States excel. Of 
railroads in operation in 1854, there were 13,105 
miles in the Free States, and 4,212 in the Slave 
States. Of canals there were 3,682 miles in the 
Free States, and 1,116 in the Slave States, 

The Post Office, which is not only the agent 
of commerce, but of civilization, joins in the 
uniform testimony. According to the tables for 
1859, the postage collected in the Free States was 
$5,532,999. and the expense of carrying the 
mails $6,748,189, leaving a deficit of $1,215,189. 
In the Slave States the amount collected was only 
$1,988,050, and the expense of carrying the 
mails $6,016,612, leaving the enormous deficit of 



$4,028,568 ; the difference between the two defi- 
cits being $2,813,372. The Slave States did not 
pay one-third of the expense of transporting their 
mails ; and not a single Slave State paid for the 
transportation of its mails ; not even the small 
State of Delaware, Massachusetts, besides pay- 
ing for hers, had a siirplus larger than the whole 
amount collected in South Carolina, 

According to the census of 1850, the value of 
churches in the Free States was $67,773,477 ; in 
the Slave States, $21,674,581. 

The voluntary charity contributed in 1855, for 
certain leading purposes of Christian benevo- 
lence, was, in the Free States, $953,813 ; for the 
same purposes, in the Slave States, $194,784. 
For the Bible cause, the Free States conti-ibuted 
$319,667; the Slave States, $68,125. For the 
missionary cause, the first contributed $319,667 ; 
and the second, $101,934. For the Tract Socie- 
ty, the first contributed $131,972 ; and the se- 
cond, $24,725. The amount contributed in 
Massachusetts for the support of missions was 
greater than that contributed by all the Slave 
States, and more than eight times that contribut- 
ed by South Carolina. 

Nor have the Free States been backward in 
charity, when the Slave States have been smit- 
ten. The records of Massachusetts show that as 
long ago as 1781, at the beginning of the govern- 
ment, there was an extensive contribution 
throughout the Commonwealth, under the parti- 
cular direction of that eminent patriot, Samuel 
Adams, for the relief of inhabitants of South 
Carolina and Georgia. In 1855 we were sadden- 
ed by the prevalence of yellow fever in Ports- 
mouth, Virginia ; and now, from a report of the 
relief committee of that place, we learn that the 
amount of charity contributed by the Slave 
States, exclusive of Virginia, the afflicted State, 
was $12,182; and, including Virginia, it was 
$33,398 ; while $42,547 were contributed by the 
Free States. 

In all this array we see the fatal influence of 
Slavery ; but its Barbarism is yet more conspicu- 
ous when we consider its Educational Establish- 
ments., and the unhappy results, which naturally 
ensue from their imperfect character. 

Of colleges, in 1856, the Free States had 61, 
and the Slave States 59 ; but the comparative 
eflicacy of the institutions which assume this 
name may be measured by certain facts. The 
number of graduates in the Free States was 
47,752, in the Slave States 19,648 ; the number 
of ministers educated in Slave colleges was 747, 
in the Free colleges 10,702 ; and the number of 
volumes in the libraries of Slave colleges 308,011 ; 
in the libraries of the Free colleges 667,227. If 
the materials were at hand for a comparison be- 
tween these colleges, in buildings, cabinets, and 
scientific apparatus, or in the standard of scholar- 
ship, the difference would be still more appa- 
rent. 

Of professional schools, teaching law, medi- 
cine, and theology, the Free States had 65, with 
269 professors, 4,426 students, and 175,951 vol- 
umes in their libraries, while the Slave States 
had only 32 professional schools, with 122 pro- 
fessors, 1,807 students, and 30,796 volumes in 
their libraries. The whole number educated at 
these institutions in the Free States was 23,513, 
in the Slave States 3,812. Of these, the largest 
number in the Slave States study law, next me- 
dicine, and lastly theology. According to the 



9 



ceusus, there are only 808 in the Slave theologi- 
cal schools, and 747 studying for tlie ministry in 
the Slave colleges ; and this is all the record we 
have of the education of the Slave clergy. 

Of academies and private schools, in 1850, the 
Free States, notwithstanding their multitudinous 
public schools, had 3,197, with 7,175 teachers, 
154,893 pupils, and an annual ii,couie of $2,457,- 
372; the Slave States had 2,797 academies and 
private schools, with 4 913 teachers, 104.976 
pupils, and an annual income of S2,079,724. 
In the absence of public schools, to a large ex- 
tent, where slavery exists, the dependence must 
be chiefly upon private schools ; and yet even in 
these the Slave States fall below the Free States, 
whether we consider the number of pupils, the 
number of teachers, or the amount paid for their 
support. 

In public scJiocls, oi^en to all, alike the poor 
and the lich, the eminence of the Free States is 
complete. Here the figures show a difference as 
wide as that between Freedom and Slavery. 
Their number in the Free States is 62,433, with 
72,621 teachers, and with 2,769,901 pupils, sup- 
ported by an annual expense of $6 780,337. 
Their number in the Slave States is 18,507, with 
19,307 teachers, and with 581,861 pupils, sup- 
ported by an annual expense cf $2,719,534. 
This diflerence may be illustrated by details. 
Virginia, an old State, and more than a third 
larger than Ohio, has 67,353 pupils in her public 
schools, while the latter State has 484,153. Ar- 
kansas, equal in age and size with Michigan, has 
only 8,493 pupils at her public schools, while 
the latter State has 110,455. South Carolina, 
three times as large as Massachusetts, has 17,838 
pupils at public school, while the latter State has 
176,475. South Carolina spends for this pur- 
pose, annually, $200,600; Massachusetts, $1,- 
006,795. Baltimore, with a population of 169,- 
012, on the northern verge of Slavery, has 
school buildings valued at $105,729; those of 
Boston are valued at $729,502, Boston, with a 
population smaller than that of Baltimore, has 
20o public schools, with 353 teachers, and 21,678 
pupils, supported at an annual expense of 
$237,000 ; Baltimore has only 36 public schools, 
with 139 teachers, and 8,011 pupils, supported 
at. an annual expense of $32^423. But even 
these figures do not disclose the whole diflFerence ; 
for there exist in the Free States teachers' insti- 
tutes, normal schools, lyceums, and public 
courses of lectures, which are unknown in the 
region of Slavery. These advantages are enjoyed 
also by the children of colored persons ; and 
here is a comparison which shows the degrada- 
tion of the Slave States. It is their habit parti- 
cularly to deride free colored persons. See, now, 
with what cause. The number of colored per- 
sens in the Free States is 196,016, of whom 
22,043, or more than one-ninth, attend school, 
which is a larger proportion than is supplied by 
the whites of the Slave States. In Massachu- 
setts there are 9,064 colored persons, of whom 
1,439, or nearly one-sixth, attend school, which 
is a much larger proportion than is supplied by 
the whites of South Carolina. 

Among educational establishments are public 
libraries ; and here, again, the Free States have 
their customary eminence, whether we consider 
libraries strictly called public, or libraries of the 
common schocjl, of the Sunday school, of the 
college, and of the church. Here the disclosures 
'2 



are startling. The number of libraries in the 
Free States is 14,911, and the sum total of vol- 
umes is 3 888,234; the number of libraries in 
the Slave States is 695, and the sum total of vol- 
umes is 649,577 ; showing an excess for Freedom 
o^' more than fourteen thousand libraries, and 
more than three millions of volumes. In the Free 
States the common school libraries are 11,881, 
and contahi 1,589,683 volumes; in the Slave 
States they are 186, and contain 57,721 volumes. 
In the Free States the Sunday school libraries 
are 1,713, and contain 478,858 volumes ; in the 
Slave States they are 275, and contain 63,463 
volumes. In the Free States the college libra- 
ries are 132, and contain 660,573 volumes ; in 
the Slave States they are 79, and contain 249,248 
volumes. In the Free States the church libra- 
ries are 109, and contain 52,723 volumes; in the 
Slave States they are 21, and contain 5,627 
volumes. In the Free States the libraries 
strictly called public, and not included under 
the heads already enumerated, are 1,058, and 
contain 1,106,397 volumes ; those of the 
Slave States are 152, and contain 273,518 
volumes. 

Turn these figures over, look at them in any 
light, and the conclusion will be irresistible for 
Freedom. The college libraries alone of the 
Free States are greater than all the libraries of 
Slavery. So, also, are the libraries of Massachu- 
setts alone greater than all the libraries of Slave- 
ry ; and the common school libraries alone 
of New York are more than twice as large 
as all the libraries of Slavery. Michigan has 
107.943 volumes in her libraries ; Arkansas 
has' 420. 

Among educational establishments, one of the 
most eiiicient is the Press : and here, again, all 
tilings testify for Freedom. The Free States ex- 
cel in the number of newspapers and periodicals 
published, whether daily, semi-weekly, weekly, 
semi-monthly, monthly, or quarterly ; and what- 
ever their character, whether literary, neutral, 
political, religious, or scientific. The whole ag- 
gregate circulation in the Free States is 334,146,- 
281 ; in the Slave States, 81,038,693. In Free 
Michigan, 3,247,736 ; in Slave Arkansas. 377,000. 
In Free Ohio 30.473,407; in Slave Kentucky, 
6,582.838. In Slave South Carolina, 7,145,930; 
in Free Massachusetts, 64,820,564 — a larger num- 
ber than in the ten Slave States, Maryland, Vir- 
ginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana and 
Texas, combined. This enormous disproportion 
in the aggregate is also preserved in the details. 
In the Slave States, political newspapers find 
more favor than any others ; but even of these 
they publish only 47,243,209 copies, while the 
Free States publish 163,583,668. Of neutral 
newspapers, the Slave States publish 8,812,620 ; 
the Free States, 79,156,738. Of religious news- 
papers, the Slave States publish 4,364.832 ; the 
Free States, 29,280,652. Of literary journals, the 
Slave States publish 20,245,360 ; the Free States, 
57,478,768. And of scientific journals, the 
Slave States publish 372,672 ; the Free States, 
4,521,260. Of these latter, the number of copies 
published in Massachusetts alone is 2,033,260 — 
more than five times the mmiber in the whole 
land of Slavery. Thus, in conti-ibutions to sci- 
ence, literature, religion, and even politics, as 
attested by the activity of the periodical press, 
do the Slave States miserably fail, while darkness 



10 



gathers over them. And this seems to be in- 
creasing with time. According to the census of 
1810, the disproportion in this respect between 
the two regions was only as two to one. It is 
now more than five to one, and is still going 
on. 

The same disproportion appears with regard 
to persons connected with the Press. In the 
Free States, the number of printers was 11,822, 
of whom 1,229 were in Massachusetts ; in the 
Slave States there were 2,895, of whom South 
Carolina had only 141. In the Free States, the 
number of publishers was 331 ; in the Slave 
States, 24. Of these, Massachusetts had 59, 
or more than twice as many as all the Slave 
States ; while South Carolina had none. In the 
Free States, the authors were 73 ; in the Slave 
States, 9 — of whom Massachusetts had 17, and 
South Carolina 6. These suggestive illustrations 
are all derived from the last official census. But 
if we go to other sources, the contrast is still the 
same. Of the authors mentioned in Duyckink's 
Cyclopedia of American Literature, 403 are of 
the Free States, and only 87 of the Slave States. 
Of the poets mentioned in Giiswold's Poets and 
Poetry of America, 123 are of the Free States, 
and only 17 of the Slave States. Of the poets, 
whose place of birth appears in Reed's Female 
Poets of America, 73 are of the Free States, and 
only 11 of the Slave States. And if we try au- 
thors by weight or quality, it is the same as 
when we try them by numbers. Out of the Free 
States have come all whose works have taken a 
place in the permanent literature of the country — 
Irving, Prescott, Sparks, Baijcroft, Emerjion, 
Motley, Hildreth, and Hawthorne ; also, Bryant, 
Longlellow, Dana, Halleck, Whittier, and Low- 
ell — and I might add indetinilely to the list. But 
what name from the Slave States could find a 
place tliere ? 

A similar disproportion appears in the number 
of Patents, attesting ihe inventive industry of 
the contrasted regions, issued during the last 
three years, 1857,^1858 and 1859. In the Free 
States there were 9,560 ; in the Slave States, 
1,449 — making a diiference of 8,111 in fa\*or of 
Freedom. The number in Free Massachusetts 
was 972 ; in Slave South Carolina, 39. The 
number in Free Connecticut, small in territory 
and population, was 628 ; in Slave Virginia, 
large in territory and population, 184. 

From all these things we might infer the ig7io- 
rance prevalent in the Slave States ; but this 
shows itself in specific results of a deplorable 
character, authenticated by the official census. 
It appears that in the Slave States there were 
493,026 native white persons over twenty years 
of age who cannot read and write, while in the 
Free States, with double the white population, 
there were but 248,725 native whites over twen- 
ty years of age in this unhappy predicament. 
In the Slave States the proportion was 1 to 12 ; 
in the Free States it was 1 to 53. The immber 
in Free Massachusetts, with a population of 
nearly a million, was 1,005, or 1 in 517 ; the 
number in Slave South Carolina, with a popula- 
tion under three hundred thousand, was 15,580, 
or 1 in 7. The number in Free Connecticut was 
1 in 277 : in Slave Virginia, 1 in 5 ; in Free JMew 
Hamp.-liire 1 in 201 ; and in Slave North Caro- 
lina, 1 iii 3. 

Before closing this picture of Slavery, where 
the dismal colors all come from official figures, 



there are two other aspects in which for a mo- 
ment it may be regarded : 

1. The first is the influence which it has on 
emigi'ation. It is stated in the official compen- 
dium of the census, (page 115,) that those per- 
sons living in Slave States who are natives of 
Free States are more numerous than those living 
in Free States who are natives of Slave States. 
This is an egregious error. Just the contrary is 
true. The census of 1850 found 609,371 in the 
Free States who were born in the Slave States, 
while only 206,638 born in the Free States were 
in the Slave States. And since the white popu- 
lation of the Free States is double that of the 
Slave States, it appears that the proportion of 
whites moving from Slavery is six times greater 
than that of the whites moving into slavery. In 
this simple fact is disclosed something of the 
aversion to Slavery which is aroused even in the 
Slave States. 

2. The second aspect is furnished by the cha- 
racter of the region on the border line between 
Freedom and Slavery. In general, the value of 
lands in Slave States adjoining Freedom is ad- 
vanced, while the value of corresponding lands 
in Free States is diminished. The efiects of Free- 
dom and Slavery are reciprocal. Slavery is a 
bad neighbor. Freedom is a good neighbor. In 
Virginia, lands naturally poor are, by their near- 
ness to Freedom, worth $12.98 an acre, while 
richer lands in other parts of the State are worth 
only $8.42. In Illinois, lands bordering upon 
Slavery are worth only $4.54 an acre, while 
other lands in Illinois are worth $8.05. As in 
the value of lands so in all other influences is 
Slavery felt for evil, and Freedom felt for good ; 
and thus is it clearly shown to be for the inte- 
rest of the Slave States to be surrounded by a 
circle of Free States. 

Thus, at every point is the character of Slave- 
ry more and more manifest, rising and dilating 
into an overshadowing Barbarism, darkening the 
whole land. Through its influence, population, 
values of all kinds, manufactures, commerce, 
railroads, canals, charities, the post office, col- 
leges, professional schools, academies, public 
schools, newspapers, periodicals, books, author- 
ship, inventions, are all stunted, and, under a 
Government which professes to be founded on 
the intelligence of the people, one in twelve of 
the white adults in the region of Slavery is offi- 
cially reported as unable to read and write. 
Never was the saying of Montesquieu more tri- 
umphantly verified, that countries are not culti- 
vated by reason of their fertility, but by reason 
of their liberty. To this truth the Slave States 
coiis^tantly testify by every possible voice. Li- 
berty is the powerful agent which drives the 
plow, the spindle, and the keel ; which opens 
avenues of ail kmds ; which inspires charity ; 
which awakens a love of knowledge, and sup- 
plies the means of gratifying it. Liberty is the 
first of schoolmasters. 

Unerring and passionless figures thus far have 
been our witnesses. But their testimony will be 
enhanced by a final glance at the geographical 
character of the Slave States ; and here there is 
a singular and instructive parallel. 

Jeflerson described Virginia as fast sinking to 
be " the Barbary of the Union" — meaning, of 
course, the Barbary of his day, which had 
not yet turned agaii]st Slavery. In this allu- 
sion he was wiser than he knew. Though on 



11 



fl'iflferent sides of the Atlantic and on different 
continents, our Slave States and the original Bar- 
hary States occupy nearly the same parallels of 
latitude ; occupy nearly tlie same extent of longi- 
tude ; embrace nearly the same number of square 
miles; enjoy kindred advantages of climate, 
being equally removed from the cold of the 
North and the burning heat of the tropics ; and 
also enjoy kindred boundaries of land and water, 
with kindred advantages of ocean and sea, with 
this difference, that the boundaries of the two re- 
gions are j)recisely reversed, so that where is land 
in one case is water in the other, while in both 
cases there is the same extent of ocean and the 
same extent of sea. Nor is this all. Algiers, for a 
long time the most obnoxious place in the Bar- 
bary States of Africa, once branded by an indig- 
nant chronicler as " the wall of the barbarian 
world," is situated near the parallel of 06° 30' 
north latitude, being the line of the Missouri 
compromise, which once marked the " wall " of 
Slavery in our country west of the Mississippi, 
while Morocco, the chief present seat of Slavery 
in the African Barbary, is on the parallel of 
Charleston. There are no two spaces on the sur- 
face of the globe, equal in extent, (and an exam- 
ination of the map will verify what I am about 
to state,) which present so many distinctive fea- 
tures of resemblance ; whether we consider the 
common parallels of latitude on which they lie, 
the common nature of their boundaries, their 
common productions, their common climate, or 
the common Barbarism which sought shelter in 
both. I do not stop to inquire why Slavery — 
banished at last from Europe, banished also from 
that part of this hemisphere which corresponds 
in latitude to Europe — should have entrenched 
itself in both hemispheres between the same 
parallels ot latitude, so that Virginia, Corolina, 
Mississippi, and Missouri, should be the Ame- 
rican complement to Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli, 
and Tunis. But there is one important point in 
the parallel which remains to be fulfilled. The 
barbarous Emperor of Morocco, in the words 
of a Treaty, has expressed his desire that Sla- 
very might pass from the memory of men, while 
Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, after cherishing Sla- 
very with a tenacity equalled only by the tenacity 
of South Carolina, have successively renounced it 
and delivered it over to the indignation of man- 
kind. In following this example the parallel 
will be complete, and our Barbary will become 
the complement in Freedom to the African Bar- 
bary, as it has already been its complement in 
Slavery, and is unquestionably its complement 
in geographical character. 

II. From the consideration of Slavery in its 
practical results, illustrated by the contrast be- 
tween the Free States and Slave States, I pass 
now to another stage of the argument, and pro- 
ceed to exiiibit Slavery in its influence on the 
Character of Slave-masters. Nothing could 
I undertake more painful, and yet there is 
nothing which is more essential to the discus- 
sion, especially in response to the pretensions of 
Senators on this floor, nor is there any point on 
which the evidence is more complete. 

It is in the Character of Slavery itself that we 
are to find the Character of Slave-masters ; but 
I need not go back to the golden lips of Chry- 
sostom to learn that " Slavery is the fruit of 
covetousness, of extravagance, of insatiable 
gi-eediness :" for we have already seen that this 



five-fold enormity is inspired "by the single idea 
of compelling men to work without wages. This 
spirit must naturally appear in the Slave-master. 
But the eloquent Christian Saint did not disclose 
the whole truth. Slavery is founded on violence, 
as we have already too clearly seen ; of course 
it can be sustained only by kindred violence, 
sometimes against the defenceless slave, some- 
times against the freeman whose indignation is 
aroused at the outrage. It is founded on brutal 
and vulgar pretensions, as we have already too 
clearly seen ; of course it c^an be sustained only 
by kinded brutality and vulgarity. The denial 
of all rights in the slave can be sustained only 
by a disregard of other rights, common to the 
whole community, whether of the person, of the 
press, or of speech. Where this exists there can 
be but one supreme law, to which all other laws, 
legislative or social, are subordinate, and this is 
the pretended law of Slavery. All these things 
must be manifest in Slave-masters, and yet, 
unconscious of their true condition, they make 
boasts which reveal still further the unhappy 
influence. Barbarous standards of conduct are 
unblushingly avowed. The swagger of a bully 
is called chivalry ; a swiftness to quarrel is called 
courage ; the bludgeon is adopted as the substi- 
tute for argument ; and assassination is lifted to 
be one of the Fine Arts. Long ago it was fixed 
certain that the day which made man a slave 
" took half his worth away " — words from the 
ancient harp of Homer, resounding through long 
generations. Nothing here is said of the human 
being at the other end of the chain. To aver 
that on this same day all his worth is taken 
away might seem inconsistent with exceptions 
which we gladly recognise ; but alas I it is too 
clear, both from reason and from evidence, that, 
bad as Slavery is for the Slave, it is worse for the 
Master. 

In making this exposure I am fortified, . at the 
outset, by two classes of authorities, whose testi- 
mony it will be diflScult to question ; the first is 
American and founded on personal experience ; 
the second is philosophical, and founded on 
everlasting truth. 

First, American Authm'ity; and here I adduce 
words often quoted, which dropped from the lips 
of Slave-masters in those bitter daj's when, see- 
ing the wrong of Slavery, they escaped from its 
injurious influence. Of these none expressed 
them.selves with more vigor than Colonel Mason, 
a Slave-master from Virginia, in debate on the 
adoption of the National Constitution. These 
are his words : 

" Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The poor 
despise labor when performed by slaves. They prevent 
the emigration of whites, who really enrich and strengthen 
a country. They produce the must pernicious ejfect on 
manners. Every Master of Slaves is bokn a petty 
TYRANT. They bring the judgment of Heaven on a coun- 
try." 

Thus, with a few touches, does this Slave- 
master portray his class, putting them in that 
hateful list, which, according to every principle 
of liberty, must be resisted so long as we obey 
God. And this same testimony also found ex- 
pression from the fiery soul of Jefferson. Here 
are some of his words : 

"There must be an unhappy influence on the manners 
of our people, produced by" the existence of Slavery 
among us The whole commerce between master and 
slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous jiassions, 
THE MOST UNREMITTING DESPOTISM on the One part, and 
degrading submissions on the other; our children see this, 



12 



and leara to imitate it * * * The man must be a pro- 
digy who can retain fiis manners and morals undepraved 
by such circumstances. And with wliat execration should 
the statesman be loaded, who permitting one-half ihe cit- 
izens thus to trample on the rights of the other, transforms 
those into despots, and these into enemies ; destroys the mor- 
als of the one part, and the amor patrice of the other! 
* * * With the morals of the people, their industry 
also is destroyed." 

Next comes the Philosophic Authority ; and 
here the language which I quote may be less fa- 
miliar, but it is hardly less commanding. Among 
names of such weight, I shall not discriminate, 
hut shall simply follow the order of time in which 
tliey appeared. First is John Locke, the great 
author of the English System of Intellectual 
Philosophy, who tiiough once unhappily conced- 
ing indulgence to American Slavery, in another 
place dcscriV)es it, in words which every Slave- 
master should know, as — 

"The state of war continued between a lawful con- 
queror and his captive. * * * So opposite to the gene- 
rous temper and courage of our nation, that ^tis hardly 
to be conceived that an Englishman, much less a gen- 
TLTOIAN, should plead for it:'' 

Then comes Adam Smith, the founder of the 
science of Political Economy, who, in his work 
on Morals, thus utters himself: 

"There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does 
not possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his 
sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. 
Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over man- 
kind, than when slie subjected these nations of heroes to 
the refuse of gaols of Europe, to wretches who possess the 
virtues neither of the countries which tht-y come from, nor 
of those which they go to. and tchose levity, brutality and 
baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the van- 
quished:'' — Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part V, chap- 
ter 2. 

This judgment pronounced just a century ago, 
was repelled by the Slave-masters of Virginia, 
in a feeble publication which attests at least 
their own consciousness that they were the 
criminals arraigned by the distinguished phi- 
losopher. This was soon follow^ed by the tes- 
timony of the great English moralist, Dr. John- 
son, who, in a letter to a friend, thus shows his 
opinion of Slave-masters : 

"To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious 
method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any 
purposes, that terminate on this side of the grave, is a 
crime of which I know not that the world has had an ex- 
ample, except in the practice of the planters of America, 
a race of mortals whom. I suppose, no other man icishes 
to resemble:^ — Letter to William Drummond, \Zth Au- 
gust, 1766. (Boswelfs Life of Johnson, by Croker.) 

With such authorities, American and Philo- 
sophic, I need not hesitate in this ungracious 
task ; but Truth, which is mightier than Mason 
and Jefferson, than John Locke, Adam Smith, 
and Samuel Johnson, marshals the evidence in 
unbroken succession. 

Proceeding with this argument, which broad- 
ens as we advance, we shall see Slave-masters (1) 
in the Law^ of Slavery, (2) in their relations with 
Slaves, (3) in their relations with each other and 
with Society, and (4) in that unconsciousness 
which renders them insensible to their true char- 
acter. 

(1.) As in considering the Character of Sla- 
very, so in considering the Character of Slave- 
masters, we must begin with the Law of Slavery 
which, as their work, testifies against them. In 
the face of such an unutterable abomination, 
where impiety, cruelty, brutality, and robbery, 
all strive for mastery, it is in vain to assert the 
humanity or refinement of its authors. Full 
well I know that the conscience which speaks so 



powerfully to the solitary soul, is often silent in 
the corporate body, and that, in all ages and 
countries, numbers, when gathered in communi- 
ties and States, have sanctioned acts from which 
the individual revolts. And yet I know no surer 
way of judging a people than by its laws, especi- 
ally where those laws have been long continued 
and openly maintained. 

Whatever may be the eminence of individual 
virtue — and I would not so far disparage human- 
ity as to suppose that the offences which may be 
general where Slavery exists are universal — it is 
not reasonable or logical to infer that the masses 
of Slave-masters are better than the Law of Sla- 
very. And since the Law itself degrades the 
slave to be a chattel, and submits him to their 
irresponsible control, with power to bind and to 
scourge ; to usurp the fruits of another's labor ; 
to pollute the body; and to outrage all ties of 
family, making marriage impossible — we must 
conclude that such enormities are sanctioned by 
Slave-masters, while the exclusion of testimony, 
and prohibition of instruction — by supplementary 
law — complete the evidence of their complicity. 
And this conclusion must stand unquestioned just 
so long as the Law of Slavery exists unrepealed. 
Cease, then, to blazon the humanity of Slave- 
masters. Tell me not of the lenity with which 
this cruel Code is tempered to its unhappy sub- 
jects. Tell me not of the sympathy which over- 
flows from the mansion of the master to the cab- 
in of the slave. In vain you assert such " hap- 
py accidents." In vain you show that there are 
individuals who do not exert the wickedness of 
the law. The Barbarism still endures, solemnly, 
legislatively, judicially attested in the very Slave 
CoDK, and proclaims constantly the character of 
its authors. And this is the first article in the 
evidence against Slave-masters. 

(2.) I am next brought to Slave-masters in 
their relations with Slaves ; and here the argu- 
ment is founded upon facts, and upon presump- 
tions irresistible as facts. Only lately has inquiry 
burst into that gloomy world of bondage, and 
disclosed its secrets. But enough is already 
known to arouse the indignant condemnation of 
mankind. For instance, here is a simple adver- 
tisement — one of thousands — from the Georgia 
Messenger : 

" EuN Away — My man Fountain : has holes in his ears, 
a scar on the right side of his forehead ; has been shot in 
the hind parts of his legs ; is marked on his back with the 
whip. Apply to Eobert Beasley, Macon, Ga." 

Holes in the ears ; scar on the forehead ; shot 
in the legs, and marks of the lash on the back ! 
Such are the tokens by which a Slave-master 
proposes to identify his slave. 

And here is another advertisement, revealing 
Slave-masters in a different light. It is from the 
National Intelligencer, ptiblished at the Capital; 
and I confess the pain with which I cite such an 
indecency in a journal of such respectability. — 
Of course, it appeared without the knowledge of 
the editors ; but it is none the less an illustrative 
example : 

"For Sale. — An accomplished and handsome lady'a 
maid. She is just sixteen years of age; was raised in a 
genteel family in Maryland ; and is now proposed to be 
sold, not for any fauU,"but simply because the owner has 
no further use for her. A note directed to C D., Gadsby's 
Hotel, will receive prompt attention." 

A sated libertiue, in a land where vice is legal- 
ized, could not expose his victim with apter 

words. 



13 



These two instances will illustrate a class. 

In the recent work of Mr. Olmstead, a close 
observer and traveler in the Slave States which 
abounds in pictures of Slavery, expressed with 
caution, and evident regard to truth, will he 
found still another, where a Slave-master thus 
frankly confesses his experience : 

" I can tell you bow you can break a nigger of running 
away, certain." said the Slave-master. " There was an old 
fellow I used to know in Georj^ia, that always cured his so. 
If a nigger ran away, when he caught him, he would 
bind his knee over a log, and fasten him so he couldn't 
stir; then he'd take a pair of pincers, and pull one of his 
toe-nails out by the roots; and tell him that if he ever run 
away again, he would pull out two of them ; and if he run 
away again after that, he to!d him he'd pull out four of 
them, and so on doubling each time. He never had to do 
it more than twice; it always cured them." — Obnsteud's 
Texas Journey, 105. 

Like this story, which is from the lips of a 
Slave-master, is another, where the master, angry 
because his slave had sought to regain his God- 
given liberty, deliberately cut the tendons of his 
heel, thus horribly maiming him for life ! 

It is in vain that these instances are denied. 
Their accumulating number, authenticated in 
every possible manner, by the press, by a cloud 
of witnesses, and by the confession of Slave- 
masters, stares us constantly in the face. 

And here we are brought again to the slave 
code, under the shelter of which these and worse 
things may be done, with complete impunity. 
Listen to the remarkable words of Chief Justice 
Kuffin, of North Carolina, who, in a solemn deci- 
sion, thus portrays, affirms, and deplores, this 
terrible latitude: 

"The obedience of the slave," he says, "is the conse- 
quence only of uncontrolled authority over the body. * 

* * The power of the master must be absolute to render 
the submission of the slave perfect. I must freely confess 
my sense of the harshness of this proposition. I feel it as 
deeply as any man can. And, as a principle of moral 
right, every person in his retirement must repudiate it. 
But, in the actual condition of things, it must be so. There 
is no remedy. This disciplin belongs to the state of Sla- 
very. It is inherent in the relation of master and slave." 
— 2%fi Slate V. Mann, 2 Devereaux R., 292. 

And this same terrible latitude has been thus 
expounded in a recent judicial decision of Vir- 
ginia : 

" It is the policy of the law, in respect to the relation of 
master and slave, and for the sake of securing proper sub- 
ordination and obedience on the part of the slave, to pro- 
tect the master from prosecution, even if the whipping 
and punishment be malicious, cruel, and excessive." — 
Santher v. Cwelt, 7 Grattan, 673. 

Can Barbarism further go ? Here is an irre- 
sponsible power, rendered more irresponsible 
still by the seclusion of the plantation, and ab- 
solutely fortified by the supplementary law ex- 
cluding the testimony of slaves. That under its 
shelter enormities should occur, stranger than 
fiction, too terrible for imagination, and surpass- 
ing any individual experience, is simply accord- 
ing to the course of nature and the course of 
history. The visitation of the abbeys in Eng- 
land disclosed vice and disorder in startling 
jforms, cloaked by the irresponsible privacy of 
monastic life. A similar visitation of plantations 
would disclose more fearful results, cloaked by 
the irresponsible privacy of Slavery. Every 
Slave-master on his plantation is a. Bashaw, with 
all the prerogatives of a Turk. According to 
Hobbes, he is " a petty king." This is true,; and 
every plantation is of itself a petty kingdom, 
with more than the immunities of an. abbey. Six 
thousand skulls of infants are said to have been 



taken from a single fish-pond near a nunnery, to 
the dismay of Pope Gregory. Under the law of 
Slavery, infants, the off'spring of masters "who 
dream of Freedom in a slave's embrace," are not 
thrown into a fish-pond, but something worse is 
done. They are sold. But this is only a single 
glimpse. Slavery, in its recesses, is another Bas- 
tile, whose horrors will never be known until it 
all is razed to the ground ; it is the Dismal Castle 
of Giant Despair, which, when captured by the 
pilgrims, excited their wonder, as they saw *' the 
dead bodies that lay here and there in the castle- 
yard, and how full of dead men's bones the dun- 
geon was." The recorded horrors of Slavery 
seem to be infinite, and each day, by the escape 
of its victims, they are still further attested, 
while the door of the vast prison-house is left 
ajar. But, alas ! unless the examples of history 
and the lessons of political wisdom are alike de- 
lusive,its unrecorded horrors must assume a form 
of yet more fearful dimensions, as we try to con- 
template them. Baffling all attempts at descrip- 
tion, they sink into that chapter of Sir Thomas 
Browne, entitled. Of some Relations whose Truth 
we fear ; and among kindred things whereof, 
according to this eloquent philosopher, there re- 
mains no register but that of hell. 

If this picture of the relations of Slave-mas- 
ters with their slaves could receive any further 
darkness, it would be by introducing the figures 
of the congenial agents through which the Barba- 
rism is maintained ; the Slave-overseer, the Slave- 
breeder, and the Slave-hunter, each without a peer 
except in his brother, and the whole constituting 
the triumvirate of Slavery, in whom its essential 
brutality, vulgarity, and grossness, are all em- 
bodied. There is the Slave-overseer, with his 
bloody lash, fitly described in his Life of Patrick 
Henry by Mr. Wirt, who, born in Virginia, knew 
the class, as " last and lowest, mostabject, degra- 
ded, unprincipled," and his hands wield at will 
the irresponsible power. There is 'the Slave- 
breeder, who assumes a higher character, and 
even enters legislative halls, where, in uncon- 
scious insensibility, he shocks civilization by 
denying, like Mr. Gholson, of Virginia, any 
alleged distinction between the " female slave" 
and " the brood mare," by openly asserting the 
necessary respite from work during the gesta- 
tion of the female slave as the ground of prop- 
erty in her ofispring, and by proclaiming that in 
this " vigintial" crop of human flesh consists 
much of the wealth of his State ; while another 
Virginian, not yet hardened to this debasing 
trade, whose annual sacrifice reaches 25,000 hu- 
man souls, confesses the indignation and shame 
with which he beholds his State '* converted into 
one grand menagerie, where men are reared for 
the market, like oxen for the shambles." And 
lastly there is the Slave-hunter, with the blood- 
hound as his brutal symbol, who pursues slaves, 
as the hunter pursues game, and does not hesi- 
tate in the public prints to advertise his Barbarism 
thus : 

" BLOOD-HOUNDS.— I have TWO of the FINEST 
DOGS for CATCHING NEGROES in the Southwest. 
They can take the trail TWELVE HOURS after the NE- 
GRO HAS PASSED, and catch him with ease. I live 
four miles southwest of Bolivar, on the road leading from 
Bolivar to Whitesville. I am ready at all times to catah 
runaway negroes. DAVID TURNER. 

" March 2, 1853." — West Tennessee Democrat. 

The blood-hound was known in early Scottish 



14 



history ; it was once vindictively put upon the 
trail ol:' Robert Bruce, and in barbarous days, by 
a cruel license of war, it was directed against the 
marauders of the Scottish border ; but more than 
a century has passed since the last survivor of 
the race, kept as a curiosity, was fed on meal in 
Ettrick Forest.* The blood-hound was em- 
ployed by Spain, against the natives of this con- 
tinent, and the eloquence of Chatham never 
touched a truer chord than when, gathering force 
from the condemnation of this brutality, he 
poured his thunder upon the kindred brutality 
of the scalping-knife, adopted as an instrument 
of war by a nation professing civilization. Tar- 
dily introduced into our Republic, some time 
after the Missouri Compromise, when Slavery 
became a political passion and Slave-masters 
began to throw aside all disguise, the blood-hound 
has become the representative of our Barbarism 
in one of its worst forms, when engaged in the 
pursuit of a fellow -man who is asserting his 
inborn title to himself ; and this brute is, indeed, 
typical of the whole brutal leash of Slave-hunt- 
ers, who, whether at home on Slave-soil, under 
the name of Slave-catchers, and kidnappers, or 
at a distance, under politer names, insult Human 
Nature by the enforcement of this Barbarism. 

(3.) From this dreary picture of Slave-masters 
with their slaves and their triumvirate of vulgar 
instruments, I pass to another more dreary still, 
and more completely exposing the influence of 
Slavery ; I mean the relations of Slave-rtiasters 
with each other, also with Society and Govern- 
ment, or, in other words, the Character of Slave- 
masters, as displayed in the general relations of 
life. And here I need your indulgence. Not in 
triumph or in taunt do 1 approach this branch 
of the subject. Yielding only to the irresistible 
exigency of the discussion and in direct response 
to the assumptions on this floor, especially by 
the Senator from Virginia, [Mr. Mason,] I shall 
proceed. If I touch Slavery to the quick, and 
enable Slave-masters to see themselves as others 
see them, I shall do nothing beyond the strictest 
line of duty in this debate. 

One of the choicest passages of the master 
Italian poet, Dante, is where a scene of transcen- 
dent virtue is described as sculptured in '* visible 
speech" on the long gallery which led to the 
Heavenly Gate. The poet felt the inspiration of 
the scene, and placed it on the wayside, where it 
could charm and encourage. This was natural. 
Nobody can look upon virtue and justice, if it 
he only in images and pictures, withuui ii.'i ling a 
kindred sentiment. Nobody can be suiiuniided 
by vice and wrong, by violence and brutality, if 
it be only in images and pictures, without com- 
ing under their degrading influence. Nobody 
can live with the one without advantage ; nobody 
can live with the other without loss. Who could 
pass his life in the secret chamber where are 
gathered the impure relics of Pompeii, without 
becoming inditt'erent to loathsome things ? But 
if these loathsome things are not merely sculp- 
tured and painted — if they exist in living reality 
—if they enact their hideous capers in life, as in 
the criminal pretensions of Slavery — while the 
lash plays and the blood spirts — while women 
are whipped and children are sold — while mar- 

* Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.— iV^oies, Canto V. 



riage is polluted and annulled — ^^while the paren- 
tal tie is rudely torn — while honest gains are 
filched or robbed — while the soul itself is shut 
down in all the darkness of ignorance, and while 
God himself is defied in the pretension that man 
can have property in his fellow-man ; if all these 
things are present, not merely in images and pic- 
tures, but in reality, their influence on character 
must be incalculable. 

It is according to irresistible law that men are 
fashioned by what is about them, whether cli- 
mate, scenery, life, or institutions. Like pro- 
duces like, and this ancient proverb is verified 
always. Look at the miner, delving low down in 
darkness, and the mountaineer, ranging on airy 
heights, and you will see a contrast in character, 
and even in personal form. The difference be- 
tween a coward and a hero may be traced in the 
atmosphere which each has breathed ; and how 
much more in the institutions under which each 
has been reared. If institutions generous and 
just ripen souls also generous and just, then 
other institutions must exhibit their influence 
also. Violence, brutality, injustice, barbarism, 
must be reproduced in the lives of all who live 
within their fatal sphere. The meat that is eaten 
by man enters into and becomes a part of his 
body ; the madder which is eaten by a dog chan- 
ges his bones to red ; and the Slavery on which 
men live, in all its fivefold foulness, must become 
a part of themselves, discoloring their very souls, 
blotting their characters, and breaking forth in 
moral leprosy. This language is strong ; but the 
evidence is even stronger. Some there may be 
of happy natures — like honorable Senators — who 
can thus feed and not be harmed. Mithridates 
fed on poison, and lived ; and it may be that 
there is a moral Mithridates, who can swallow 
without bane the poison of Slavery. 

Instead of " ennobling" the master, nothing 
can be clearer than that the slave drags his mas- 
ter down, and this process begins in childhood, 
and is continued through life. Living much in 
association with his slave, the master finds noth- 
ing to remind him of his own deficiencies, to 
prompt his ambition or excite his shame. With- 
out these provocations to virtue, and without an 
elevating example, he naturally shares the Bar- 
barism of the society which he keeps. Thus the 
very inferiority which the Slave-master attributes 
to the African race explains the melancholy con- 
dition of the communities in which his degrada- 
tion is declared by law. 

A single false principle or vicious thought may 
degrade a character otherwise blameless ; and 
this is practically true of the Slave-master. Ac- 
customed to regard men as property, his sensi- 
bilities are blunted and his moral sense is ob- 
scured. He consents to acts from which Civili- 
zation recoils. The early Church sold its prop- 
erty, and even its sacred vessels, for the redemp- 
tion of captives. This was done on a remarkable 
occasion by St. Ambrose, and successive canons 
confirmed the example. But in the Slave States 
this is all reversed. Slaves there are often sold 
as th"^ property of the Church, and an instance 
is related of a slave sold in South Carolina in 
order to buy plate for the conmuuiion table. 
Who can calculate the eflfect of such an example ? 

Surrounded by pernicious influences of all 
kinds, both positive and negative, the first mak- 
ing him do that which he ought not to do, and 



15 



the second making him leave undone that which 
he ought to have done — through childhood, 
youth, and manhood, even unto age — unable 
while at home to escape these influences, over- 
shadowed constantly by the portentous Barba- 
rism about him.the Slave-master naturally adopts 
the bludgeon, the revolver, and tiie bowie-knife. 
Through these he governs his plantation, and 
secretly armed with these he enters the world. 
These are his congenial companions. To wear 
these is his pride ; to use them becomes a pas- 
sion, almost a necessity, Nothiug contributes to 
violence so much as the wearing of tlie instru- 
ments of violence, thus having them always at 
hand to obey the lawless instincts of the indi- 
vidual. A barbarous standard is established ; a 
duel is not dishonorable ; a contest peculiar to 
our Slave-masters, known as a " street-fight," is 
not shameful ; and modern imitators of Cain 
have a mark set upon them, not for reproach and 
condemnation, but for compliment and approval. 
I wish to keep within bounds ; but unanswerable 
facts, accumulating in fearful quantities, attest 
that the social system, so much vaunted by hon- 
orable Senators, and which we are now asked to 
sanction and to extend, takes its character from 
this spirit, and with professions of Christianity 
on the lips, becomes Cain-like. And this is ag- 
gravated by the prevailing ignorance in the Slave 
States, where one in twelve of the adult white 
population is unable to read and write. 

"The boldest theywlio least partake the light, 
As game-cocks in the dark are trained, to fight." 

Of course there are exceptions, which we all 
gladly recognize, but it is this spirit which pre- 
dominates and gives the social law. And here 
mark an important difference. Elsewhere vio- 
lence shows itself in spite of law, whether social 
or statute ; in the Slave States it is because of 
law both social and statute. Elsewhere it is pur- 
sued and condemned ; in the Slave States it is 
adopted and honored. Elsewhere it is hunted as 
a crime ; in the Slave States it takes its place 
among the honorable graces of society. 

Let not these harsh statements stand on my 
authority. Listen to the testimony of two Gov- 
ernors of Slave States in their messages to tlue 
Legislatures : 

" We long to see the day," said the Governnr of Ken- 
tucky in 1887, ''when the liw will assert its majesty, and 
stop the wanton destruction of life which almost daily 
occurs within the jurisdiction of the OommonweaUh. Men 
slaughter each other with almost perfect iJiipuniii/. A 
species of common law has grown up in Kentucky, which, 
were it written down, would, in all civilized countries, 
cause it to be rechristeiied, in derision, the land of btood.^'' 

Such was the official confession of a Slave- 
master Grovernor of Kentucky. And here is the 
official confession made the same year by the 
Slave-master Governor of Alabama: 

"We hear of homicides in different parts of the State 
continually, and yet have few convictions, and still fewer 
executions ! Why do we hear of siubbings and shootings 
almost daily in some part or other of our State?" 

A land of blood ! Stabbings and shootings al- 
most daily ! Such is the oliicial language. It 
was natural that contemporary newspapers should 
repeat what thus found utterance in high places. 
Here is a confession by a newspaper in Missis- 
sippi : 

" The moral atmosphere in our State appears to be in a 
deleterious and sunguina,ry conditio7i. Almost every ex- 
change paper which reaches us contains some inhumcm 
and revoltijig case of inurdcr or death bv violence." — 
Grand Gulf Advertiser^ 2'lth June, 1837. 



Here is another confession by a newspaper in 
New Orleans : 

" In view of the crimes which are daily committed, we 
are led to inquire whether it is owing to the inefficiency 
of our laws, or to the manner in which these laws are ad- 
ministered, that this frightful deluge of human blood flows 
through oxir streets and our places of public resort.^'' — New 
Orleans Bee, 2M May, 1838. 

And here is testimony of a different character : 

"No one who has not been an integral part of a slave- 
holding community can have any idea of its abominations. 
It is a whited sepulchre, full of dead men's bones and all 
uncleanness." 

These are the words of a Southern lady, the 
daughter of the accomplished Judge Grimke of 
South Carolina. 

A catalogue of affrays between politicians, 
commonly known as " street fights" — I use the 
phrase which comes ft om the land of Slavery — 
would show that these authorities were not mis- 
taken. That famous Dutch picture, admired par- 
ticularly by a successful engraving, and called the 
Knife-fight, presents a scene less revolting than 
one of these. Two or more men, armed to the 
teeth, meet in the streets, at a court-house or a 
tavern, shoot at each other with revolvers, then 
gash each other with knives, close, and roll upon 
the ground, covered with dirt and blood, strug- 
gling and stabbing till death, prostration, or sur- 
render, puts an end to the conflict. Each instanc<5 
tells a shameful story, and cries out against the 
social system which can tolerate such Barbarism. 
A catalogue of duels in our country would testify 
again to the reckless disregard of life where 
Slavery exists, and would exhibit Violence 
flaunting in the garb of Honor, and prating of a 
barbarous code disowned equally by reason and 
religion. But you have already supped too full 
of horrors, and I hasten on. 

Pardon me if I stop for one moment to exhibit 
and denounce the Duel. I do it only because it 
belongs to the brood of Slavery. An enlightened 
Civilization has long ago rejected this relic of 
Barbarism, and never has one part of the argu- 
ment against it been put more sententiously than 
bj Franklin : " A duel decides nothing." said 
this patriot philosopher, "and the person ap- 
pealing to it makes himself judge in his om^u 
cause, condemns the offender without a jury and 
undertakes himself to be the executioner." To 
these emphatic words I would add two brief pro- 
positions, which, if practically adopted, make 
the Duel impossible — first, that the acknowledg- 
ment of wrong with apology or explanation can 
never be otherwise than honorable ; and secondly, 
that, in the absence of all such acknowledg- 
ment, no wrong can ever. be repaired by a gladi- 
atorial contest, where brute force, or skill, or 
chance, must decide the day. Iron and adamant 
are not stronger than these arguments ; nor can 
any one attempt an answer without exposing his 
feebleness. And yet Slave-masters, disregarding 
its irrational character — insensible to its folly — 
heedless of its impiety — and unconscious of its 
Barbarism, openly adopt the Duel as a regulator 
of manners and conduct. Two voices from South 
Carolina have been raised against it, and I men- 
tion them with gladness as testimony even in 
that land of Slavery. The first was Charles 
Cotesworth Pinckney, who in the early days of 
the Republic openly declared his " abhorrence of 
t\-\e practice," and invoked the clergy of his 
State ''as a particular favor at some convenient 
early day to preach a sermon on the sin and folly 



16 



of duelling." The other was Mr. Uliett, wlio on 
til is floor openly declared as his reasons for de- 
clining the Duel, " that he feared God more than 
man." Generous words, for which many errors can 
be pardoned. But these voices condemn the social 
system of which the Duel is a natural product. 

Looking now at the broad surface of society 
where Slavery exists, we shall find its spii'it 
actively manifest in the suppression of all free- 
dom of speech or of the press, especially with re- 
gard to tills wrong. Nobody in the Slave States 
can speak or print against Slavery, except at 
the peril of life or liberty. St. Paul could call 
upon the people of Athens to give up the wor- 
ship of unknown gods ; he could live in his own 
hired house at Rome, and preach Christianity in 
this Heathen metropolis; but no man can be 
heard against Slavery in Charleston or Mobile. 
We condemn the Inquisition, which subjects all 
within its influence to censorship and secret 
judgment ; but this tyranny is repeated in Ame- 
rican Slave-mastei'S. Truths as simple as the 
great discovery of Galileo are openly denied, and 
all who declare them are driven to recant. We 
condemn the Index Expurgatorius of the Roman 
Church ; but American Slave-masters have an 
Index on which are inscribed all the generous 
books of the age. There is one book, the Mar- 
vel of recent literature, Uncle Tom's Cabin, 
which has been thus treated both by the Church 
and by the Slave-masters, so that it is honored 
by the same suppresion at the Vatican and at 
Charleston, 

Not to dwell on these instances, there is one 
which has a most instructive ridiculousness. A 
religious discourse of the late Dr. Channing on 
West India Emancipation — the last e3"ort of his 
beautiful career — was ottered for sale by a book 
agent at Charleston. A prosecution by the South 
Carolina Association ensued, and the agent was 
held to bail in the sum of one thousand dollars. 
Shortly afterwards, the same agent received for 
sale a work by Dickens, freshly published, 
" American Notes ;" but, determined not to ex- 
pose himself again to the tyrannical Inquisition, 
he gave notice through the newspapers that the 
book " would be submitted to highly intelligent 
members of the South Cai-olina Association for 
inspection^ and if the sale is approved by them, 
it will be for sale — if not, not." 

Listen also to another recent instance, as re- 
counted in the Montgomery Mail , a newspaper 
of Alabama : 

" Last Saturday we devoted to the flames a large num- 
ber of copies of Spurgeon's Sermons, and the pile was 
graced at the top with a copy of " Graves's Great Iron 
Wheel," which a Baptist friend presented for the purpose. 
We trust that the works of the greasy cockney vociferator 
may receive the same treatment throughout the South. 
And if the Pharisaical author should ever show himself in 
these parts, we trust that a stout cord may speedily find its 
way around his eloquent throat. He has proved himself 
a dirty low-bred slanderer, and ought to be treated accord- 
ingly." 

And very recently we have read in the jour- 
nals, that the trustees of a College in Alabama 
have resolved that Dr. Wyland's admirable work 
on Moral Science " contains abolition doctrine of 
the deepest dye ;" and they proceeded to de- 
nounce " the said book, and forbid its further 
use in the Institute." 

The speeches of Wilberforce in the British 
Parliament, and especially those magnificent eflforts 
of Brougham, where he exposed "the wild and 
guilty fantasy that man can hold property in 



man," were insanely denounced by the British 
planters in the West Indies ; but our Slave- 
masters go further. Speeches delivered in the 
Senate have been stopped at the Post-office ; 
booksellers who had received them have been 
mobbed, and on at least one occasion the speeches 
have been solemnly proceeded against by a 
Grand Jury. 

All this is natural, for tyranny is condemned 
to be consequent with itself. Proclaim Slavery 
to be a permanent institution, instead of a tempo- 
rary Barbarism, soon to pass away, and tlien, by 
the unhesitating logic of self-preservation, all 
things must yield to its support. The safety of 
Slavery becomes the supreme law. And since 
Slavery is endangered by liberty in any form, 
therefore all liberty must be restrained. Such is 
the philosophy of this seeming paradox in a 
Republic. And our Slave-masters show them- 
selves apt in this work. Violence and brutality 
are their ready instruments, quickened always 
by the wakefulness of suspicion, and perhaps 
often by the restlessness of uneasy conscience. 
Everywhere in the States the Lion's Mouth of 
Venice, where citizens were anonymously de- 
nounced, is open ; nor are the gloomy prisons 
and the Bridge of Sighs wanting. 

This spirit has recently shown itself with such 
intensity and activity as to constitute what has 
been properly termed a reign of terror. North- 
ern men, unless they happen to be delegates to a 
Democratic Convention, are exposed in their 
travels, whether of business or health, to the 
operation of this system. They are watched and 
dogged, as if in a land of Despotism ; they are 
treated with the meanness of a disgusting tyranny, 
and live in peril always of personal indignity, 
and often of life and limb. Complaint has 
sometimes been made of the wrongs to Ame- 
rican citizens in Mexico ; but during the last 
year, more outrages on American citizens have 
been perpetrated in the Slave States than in 
Mexico. Here, again, I have no time for de- 
tails, which have been already presented in other 
quarters. But the instances are from all condi- 
tions of life. In Missouri, a Methodist clergy- 
man, suspected of being an Abolitionist, was 
taken to prison, amidst threat of tar and feathers. 
In Arkansas, a schoolmaster was driven from 
the State. In Kentucky, a plain citizen from 
Indiana, on a visit to his friends, was threatened 
with death by the rope. In Alabama, a simple 
person from Connecticut, peddling books, was 
thrust into prison amidst cries of " Shoot him I 
hang him! " In Virginia, a Shaker, from New- 
York, peddling garden seeds, was forcibly ex- 
pelled from the State. In Georgia, a merchant's 
clerk, Irishman by birth, who simply asked the 
settlement of a just debt, was cast into prison, 
robbed of his pocket-book, containing nearly 
$100, and barely escaped with his life. In South 
Carolina, a stone-cutter. Irishman by birth, was 
stripped naked and then amidst cries of " Brand 
him ! " " Burn him ! " " Spike him to death ! " 
scourged so that blood came at every stroke, 
while tar was poured upon his lacerated flesh 
These atrocities, calculated, according to the 
words of a poet of subtle beauty, to "make a 
holiday in hell," were all ordained, by Vigilance 
Committees, or by that busiest magistrate, Judge 
Lynch, inspired by the demon of Slavery. 
" He let him loose, and cried, Halloo ! 
How shall we yield him honor due ? " 



17 



In perfect sTiamelessness, and as if to blazon 
this fiendish, spirit, we have had, this winter, in 
a leading newspaper of Virginia, an article pro- 
posing to give twenty-five dollars each for the 
heads of citizens, mostly members of Congress, 
known to be against Slavery, and $50,000 for the 
head of William H. Seward. And in still 
another paper of Virginia, we find a proposition 
to raise $10,000 to be given for the kidnapping 
and delivery of a venerable citizen, Joshua R. 
Giddings, at Richmond, "or $5,000 for the pro- 
duction of his head." These are fresh instances, 
but they are not alone. At a meeting of Slave- 
masters in Georgia, in 1835, the Grovenor was 
recommended to issue a proclamation, offering 
$5,000 as a reward for the apprehension of either 
of ten persons named in the resolution, citizens 
of New York and Massachusetts, and one a sub- 
iect of Great Britain — not one of whom it was 
pretended had ever set foot on the soil of Geor- 
gia. The Milledgeville Fed.eral TJnion^ a news- 
paper of Georgia, in 1836, contained an offer of 
$10,000 for kidnapping a clergyman residing in 
the city of New York. A Committee of Vigi- 
lance of Louisiana, in 1835, offered in the 
Louisiana Journal $50,000 to any person who 
would deliver in their hands Arthur Tappan, a 
merchant of New York; and during the same 
year, a public meeting in Alabama, with a person 
entitled "Honorable" in the chair, offered a 
similar reward of $50,000 for the apprehension 
of the same Arthur Tappan; and of La Roy 
Sunderland, a clergyman of the Methodist 
church at New York. 

These manifestations are not without proto- 
type in the history of the Anti-Slavery cause in 
other countries. From the beginning. Slave- 
masters have encountered argument by brutality 
and violence. If we go back to the earliest of 
Abolitionists, the wonderful Portuguese preacher, 
Vieyra, we shall find that his matchless elo- 
quence and unquestioned piety did not save him 
from indignity. After a sermon exposing Sla- 
very in Brazil, he was seized and imprisoned, 
while one of the principal Slave-masters asked 
him, in mockery, where were all his learning 
and all his genius now, if they could not deliver 
him in this extremity ? He was of the Catholic 
church. But the spirit of Slavery is the same in 
all churches. A renowned Quaker minister of the 
last century, Thomas Chalkley, while on a visit at 
Barbados, having simply recommended charity 
to the slaves, without presumijig to breathe a 
word against Slavery itself, was first met by dis- 
turbance in the meeting, and afterwards, on the 
highway, and in open day, was fired at by one 
of the exasperated planters, with "a fowling- 
piece loaded with small shot, ten of which made 
marks, and several drew blood." Even in Eng- 
land, while the slave trade was under discussion, 
the same spirit appeared. Wilberforce, who rep- 
resented the cause of Abolition in Parliament, 
was threatened with personal violence ; Clarkson, 
who represented the same cause before the peo- 
ple, was assaulted by the infuriate Slave-traders, 
and narrowly escaped being hustled into the 
dock ; and Roscoe, the accomplished historian, 
on his return to Liverpool from his seat m 
Parliament, where he had signalized himself as 
an opponent of the slave trade, was met at the 
entrance of the town by a savage mob, composed 
of persons interested in this traffic, armed with 



knives and bludgeons, the distinctive arguments 
and companions of Pro-Slavery partisans. 

And even in the Free State?, the partisans of 
Slavery have from the beginning acted under the 
inspiration of violence. The demon of Slavery 
has entered into them, and under its influence 
they have behaved like Slave-masters. Public 
meetings for the discussion of Slavery have been 
interrupted ; public halls dedicated to its dis- 
cussion have been destroyed or burned to the 
ground. In all our populous cities the great 
rights of speech and of the press have been 
assailed precisely as in the Slave States. In Booton 
Garrison, pleading for the Slave, was dragged 
through the streets with a halter about his neck, 
and in Illinois Lovejoy, also pleading for the Slave, 
was ferociously murdered. The former yet lives 
to speak for himself, while the latter lives in his 
eloquent brother, the Representative from Illi- 
nois in the other House. Thus does Slavery show 
its natural influence even at a distance. 

Nor in the Slave States is this spirit confined 
to the outbreaks of mere lawlessness. Too 
strong for restraint, it finds no limitations except 
in its own barbarous will. The Government be- 
comes its tool, and in official acts does its bidding. 
Here again the instances are numerous. I might 
dwell on the degradation of the Post Office, when 
its official head consented that, for the sake of 
Slavery, the mails themselves should be rifled. 
I might dwell also on the cruel persecution of 
Free Persons of color who in the Slave States 
generally, and even here in the District of Colum- 
bia, are not allowed to testify where a white man 
is in question, and who now in several States are 
menaced by legislative act with the alternative 
expulsion from their homes or of reduction to 
Slavery. But I pass at once to two illustrative 
transactions, which, as a son of Massachusetts, I 
cannot forget. 

1. The first relates to a citizen, of purest life 
and perfect integrity, whose name is destined to 
fill a conspicuous place in the history of Freedom, 
William Lloyd Garririon. Born in Massachusetts, 
bred to the same profession with Benjamin 
Franklin, and like his great predecessor becom- 
ing an editor, he saw with instinctive clearness 
the wrong of Slavery, and at a period when the 
ardors of the Missouri Question had given way 
to indifference throughout the North, he stepped 
forward to denounce it. The jail at Baltimore, 
where he then resided, was his earliest reward. 
Afterwards, January 1st, 1831, he published the 
first number of the Liberator, inscribing for his 
motto an utterance of Christian philanthropy, 
" My country is the world, my countrymen are 
all mankind," and declaring in the face of sur- 
rounding apathy, *' I am in earnest. I will not 
equivocate, I will not retreat a single inch, and I 
will be heard." In this sublime spirit he conx- 
menced his labors for the Slave, proposing no 
intervention by Congress in the States, and on 
well considered principle avoiding all appeals to 
the bondmen themselves. Such was his simple 
and thoroughly constitutional position, when, 
before the expiration of the first year, the Legis- 
lature of Georgia, by solemn act, a copy of which 
I have now before me, " approved " by Wilson 
Lumpkin, Governor, appropriated $5 ,,000 "to be 
paid to any person who shall arrest, bring to 
trial, and prosecute to conviction under the laws 
of this State, the editor or publisher of a certain 
paper called the Liberator, published at the 



18 



to-vm of Boston and State of Massacliusetts," 
This infamous legislative act touching a person 
absolutely beyond the jurisdiction of Georgia, 
and in no way amenable to its laws, constituted 
a plain "bribe to the gangs of kidnappers engen- 
dered by Slavery. With this barefaced defiance 
of justice and decency Slave-masters inaugurat- 
ed the system of violence by which they have 
sought to crusli every voice that has been raised 
iigainst Slavery. 

2. Here is another illustration of a different 
character. Free persons of color, citizens of 
Massachusetts, and, according to tlie institutions 
of this Commonwealth, entitled to equal privi- 
leges with other citizens, being in service as 
mariners, and touching at the port of Charleston, 
in South Carolina, liave been seized, and with 
no allegation against them, except of entering 
this port in the discharge of their riglitful busi- 
ness, have been cast into prison, and fliere 
detained during the delay of the vessel. This is 
by virtue of a statute of South Carolina, passed 
in 1823, which further declares, that in the 
failure of the captain to pay the expenses, these 
freemen " shall be seized and taken as absolute 
slaves," one moiety of the proceeds of their sale 
to belong to the sheriff. Against all remon- 
strance — against the ofiicial opinion of Mr. Wirt, 
as Attorney General of the United States, declar- 
ing it unconstitutional — against the solemn 
judgment of Mr. Justice Johnson, of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, himself a 
Slave-master and citizen of South Carolina, also 
pronouncing it unconstitutional — this sta,tute, 
which is an obvious injury to Northern shij)- 
owners, as it is an outrage to the mariners whom 
it seizes, has been upheld to this day by South 
Carolina, 

But this is not all. Massachusetts, in order to 
obtain for her citizens that protection which was 
denied, and especially to save them from the 
dread penalty of being sold into Slavery, ap- 
pointed a citizen of South Carolina to act as her 
agent for this purpose, and to bring suits in tlie 
Circuit Court of the United States in order to try 
the constitutionality of this pretension. Owing 
to the sensibility of the people in that State, this 
agent declined to render this simple service. 
Massachusetts next selected one of her own sons, 
a venerable citizen, who had already served with 
honor in the other House of Congress, and who 
was of admitted eminence as a lawyer, the Hon. 
Samuel Hoar, of Concord, to visit Charleston, 
and to do what the agent first appointed had 
shrunk from doing. This excellent gentleman, 
beloved by all who knew him, gentle in manners 
as he was firm in character, and with a counte- 
nance that was in itself a letter of recommenda- 
tion, arrived at Charleston, accompanied only by 
his daughter. Straightway all South Carolina 
was convulsed. According to a story in Boswell's 
Johnson, all the inhabitants at St. Kilda, a remote 
island of the Hebrides, on the approach of a 
stranger, " catch cold ;" but in South Carolina it 
is a fever that thej "catch." The Governor at 
the time, who was none other than one of her 
present Senators, [Mr. Hammond,] made his 
arrival the subject of a special message to the 
Legislature, which I now have before me ; the 
Legislature all " caught "the fever, and swiftly 
adopted resolutions calling upon " his Excel- 
lency the Governor to expel from its territory the 
*aid agent, after due notice to depart," and 



promising " to sustain the Executive authority 
in any measures it may adopt for the purpose 
aforesaid." 

Meanwhile the fever raged in Charleston. The 
agent of Massachusetts was first accosted in the 
street by a person unknown to him, who, fllourish- 
ing a bludgeon in his hand — the bludgeon always 
shows itself where Slavery is in question — cried 
out, "you had better be traveling, and the 
sooner the better for you, I can tell you ; if you 
stay here until to-morrow morning, you will feel 
something you will not like, I'm thinking." Next 
came threats of an attack during the following 
night on the Hotel in which he was lodged ; 
then a request from the landlord that he should 
quit, in order to preserve the Hotel itself from 
the impending danger of an infuriate mob ; then 
a committee of Slave-masters, who politely pro- 
posed to conduct him to the boat. Thus arrested 
in his simple errand of good will, this venerable 
public servant, whose appearance alone — like 
that of the " grave and pious man " mentioned 
by Virgil — would have softened any mob not in- 
spired by Slavery, yielded to the ejectment pro- 
posed — precisely as the prisoner yields to the 
ofiicers of the law — and left Charleston, while a 
person in the crowd was heard to oflTer himself 
as "the leader of a tar-and- feather gang to be 
called into the service of the city on the occa- 
sion." Nor is this all ! The Legislature a second 
time " caught " the fever, and, yielding to its 
infuence passed* another statute, forbidding 
under severe penalties any person within the State 
from accepting a commission to befriend these 
colored mariners, and under penalties severer 
still extending even to imprisonment for life, pro- 
hibiting any person " on his behalf, or by virtue 
of any authority rom any State," to come within 
South Carolina for this purpose ; and then, to' 
complete its work, the Legislature took away the 
writ of habeas corpus from all such mariners. 

Such is a simple narrative founded on authen- 
tic documents. I do not adduce it now for 
criticism, but simply to enroll it in all its stages 
— beginning with the earliest pretension of 
South Carolina, continuing in violence, and end- 
ing in yet other pretensions — among the special 
instances where the Barbarism of Slavery stands 
confessed even in ofiicial conduct. And yet this 
transaction, which may well give to South Caro- 
lina the character of a shore " where shipwrecked 
mariners dread to land," has openly vindicated 
in all its details from beginning to end by both 
the Senators from that State, while one of them, 
[Mr. Hammond,] in the same breath, has borne 
his testimony from personal knowledge to the 
character of the public agent thus maltreated, 
saying, " he was a pleasant, kind, old gentle- 
man, and I had a sort of friendship for 
him during the short time I sat near him in 
Congress." 

Thus, sir, whether we look at individuals or 
at the community where Slavery exists, at law- 
less outbreaks or at ofiicial conduct. Slave-masters 
ai'e always the same. Enough, you will say, has 
been said. Yes ; enough to expose Slavery, but 
not enough for Truth. The most instructive 
and most grievous part still remains. It is the 
ejfhibition of Slave-masters in Congressional 
history. Of course, the representatives reflects the. 
character as well as the political opinions of the 
constituents whose will it is his boast to obey. 
It follows that the passions and habits of Slave- 



19 



masters are naturally represented in Congress — 
cliast«iied to a certain extent, perhaps by the 
requirements of Parliamentary Law, hut breaking 
out in fearful examples. And here, again, facts 
shall speak, as nothing else can. 

In proceeding with this duty, to wliich, as 
you will perceive, I am impelled by tlie positive 
requirements of this debate, I crave the indul- 
gence of the Senate, while, avoiding all allusions 
to j)iivate life or private character, and touehing 
simply what is of record, and already " enrolled 
in the Capitol." I present a few only of many 
instances, which, especially during these latter 
days, since Slavery has become paramount, have 
taken their place in our national history. 

Here is an instance. On the 15th February, 
1837, R. M. Whitney was arraigned Ijefoie the 
House of Representatives for c(_-ntempt, in refusing 
to attend, when required, before ;l Uoninnttee of 
investigation into the administration of the Ex- 
ecutive office. His excuse was, that he could not 
attend without exposing himself thereby to out- 
rage and violence in tlie committee room; and 
on exandna'iion at the bar of the House, Mr. 
Fairfield, a member of the Comnuttee, atterwurds 
a member of this body, and CTOvernor of Maine, 
testified to the actual faets. It appeared that Mr, 
Peyton, a Slave-master from Tennessee, and a 
member of the Committee, regarding ii certain 
answer in writing by Mr. Whitney to an interro- 
gatory propounded by him as offensive, broke 
out in these words : '' Mr. Chairman, I wish you 
to inform the witness, that he is not to insult me 
in his answers; if he does, God damn him! I 
will take his life on the spot ! " Tlie witness, 
rising, claimed the protection of the Conunittee ; 
on which Mr. Peyton exclaimed; ' (iod damn 
you, you shan't speak ; you shan't say one word 
while you are in this room ; if you do, I will put 
you to death." Mr. Wise, anotlier Slave-master 
from Virginia, Chairman of the Committee, and 
latterly Grovernor of Virginia, then intervened, 
saying, " Yes, this damned insolence is insuffera- 
ble." Soon after, Mr. Peyton observing that the 
witness was looking at hnn, cried out, " Damn 
liim, his eyes are on me — God damn him, he is 
looking at me — he shan't do it — damn him, he 
shan't look at me." 

These things, and much more disclosed by Mr. 
Fairfield in reply to interrogatories in the House, 
were confirmed by other witnesses, and Mr. 
Wise himself in a speech made the admission 
that he wsts armed with deadly weapons, saying, 
" I watched the motion of that rigiit arm, [of 
the witness] the elbow of which could be seen 
by me, and had it moved one inch, he had died 
on the spot. That was my determination." 

All tins will be found in the 13th volume of 
the Congressional Debates, with the evidence in 
detail, and the discussion thereupon. 

Here is another instance of similar character, 
which did not occur in a Committee-room but 
during debate in the Senate Chamber. While 
the Compromise measures were under discussion 
in 1850, on the 17th of April, 1850, Mr. Foote, 
a Slave-master from Mississippi, in the course 
of his remarks, commenced a personal allusion 
to Mr. Benton. This was aggravated by the cir-' 
cumstance that only a few days previously he 
had made this distinguished gentleman the mark 
for most bitter and vindictive personalities. 
Mr. Benton ro.se at once from his seat, and, with 
au angry countenance, but without weapons of 



any kind in his hand, or as it appeared aftw- 
ward before the Committee, on his ijerson, 
advanced in the direction of Mr. Foote, when 
the latter gliding backwards, drew from his 
pocket a five-chambered revolver, full loaded, 
which he cocked. Meanwhile Mr. Benton, at the 
suggestion of friends, was already returiiing to 
his seat, when he perceived the pistol Excited 
greatly by this deadly menace, he exclainurd, *-I 
am not armed. I have no pistols. I disdain to 
carry arms. I have no pistols. Stand out of 
the way, and let the assassin fire." Mr. Foote 
remained standing in the position he had taken, 
with his pistol in his hand, cocked. * Soou 
after," says the report of the Committee appoint- 
ed to investigate this occurrence, " both Senators 
resumed their seats, and order was restored." 

All this will be found at length in the 21st 
volume of the Congressional Globe. 

xlnoth-r instance, which belongs to the same 
class, is given by the Hon. William Jay, a vvriter 
of singular accuracy, and of the tmest principle, 
who has done much to illustrate the history of 
i)ur country. It is this : Mr. Dawson, a Slave- 
master from Louisiana, and a member of the 
House of Representatives, went up to another 
member on the floor of the House, and addressed 
to him tliese words : •' U you attemj)t to 
speak or rise from your seat, sir, by G — d, I'll 
cut your throivt."' 

The duel, which at home in the Slave States is 
" twin " with the "street fight," is also " twin " 
with these instances. It is constantly adopted or 
attempted by Siave-masters in Congress. But I 
shall not enter upon this catalogue. I content 
myself with showing the openness with which. 
in debate it has been menaced, and without any 
call to order. 

Mr. Foote, the same Slave-master already 
mentioned, in debate in the Senate, 26th of 
March, 1850, thus sought to provoke Mr. Benton. 
1 take his words from the Congressional Globe, 
vol. 21, p. 603 : 

'■ There are instances in tlie history of the Senator which 
might well relieve a man of honor from the obligaiion to 
recognise him as a filling antagonist ; ycl it i.- notwith- 
standing tru'-, that, if the Senator trom Missouri will deign 
to acknowledge hlmae^t' respu)istble to the laws of hoywrXiQ 
shall have a very early oppportutiity of proving his prowess 
in contest wiUi one over whom 1 hold perfect control ; or 
if he feels in the least degree aggrieved ai anything which 
has fallen from me. he shall, on demanding it, liuce full 
redress accorded to hiiu. according to ihesaidlaws of lionor. 
I do not denounce him as a coward ; such language is 
unfitted for this audit nee; but if he wishes to patch up tiis 
reputation lor courage, now greatly on the wane, he will 
certainly have an upporiunity of doing so whenever lie 
makes his desire known in Iht premises. At present- 
he is shielded by his age, his open disavowal of the obli- 
gatory laws of honor, and his Senatorial privihges." 

With such bitter taunts and reiterated provo- 
cations to the duel was Mr. Benton puisued ; 
but there was no call to order, nor any action of 
the Senate on this outrage. 

Here is another instance. In debate in the 
Senate on the 27th February, 1852, Mr. Clemens, 
a Slave-master of Alabama, thus directly attack- 
ed Mr. Rhett for undertaking to settle their 
difi"erences by argument in the Senate rather 
than by the duel. " No man," said he, '• with 
the feeling of a man in his bosom, would have 
sought redress here. He would have looked for 
it elsewhere. Pie now comes here not to ask 
redress in the only way he should have sought 
it." 

There was no call to order. 



20 



Here is still another. In tlie deTbate of the bill 
for the improvement of Rivers and Harbors, 29th 
July, 1854, {Congressional Globe, \ol. 29, appen- 
dix, page 1163,) the Senator from Louisiana, [Mr. 
Benjamin,] who is still a member of this hody , 
ardent for Slavery, while professing to avoid per- 
sonal altercation in the Senate, especially "with 
a gentleman who professes the principle of non- 
resistance, as he understood the Senator from 
New York does," proceeded most earnestly to 
repel an imagined imputation on him by Mr. 
Seward, and wound up by saying : "If it came 
from another quarter, it would not be upon this 
floor that I should answer it.''' 

And then, during the present _ session, the 
Senator from Mississippi, [Mr. Davis,] who 
speaks so often for Slavery, in a colloquy on this 
floor with the Senator from Vermont, [Mr. 
CoLLAMEK,] has maintained the Duel as a mode 
of settling personal differences and vindicating 
what is called personal honor ; as if personal 
honor did not depend absolutely upon what a 
man does, and not what is done to him. "A 
gentleman," says the Senator, " has the right to 
give an insult, if he feels himself bound to 
answer fo7~ it f^ and in reply to the Senator from 
Vermont, he declared, that in case of insult, 
taking another out and shooting him might be 
"satisfaction." 

I do not dwell on this instan^, nor on any of 
these instances, except to make a single com- 
ment. These declarations have all been made in 
open Senate without any check from the Chair. 
Of course, they are clear violations of the first 
principles of Parliamentary Law, and tend 
directly to provoke a violation of the law of the 
land. All duels are prohibited by solemn act 
of Congress. (See Statutes at Large, vol. 5, 
page 318, February 20, 1839.) In case of death, 
the surviving parties are declared guilty of 
felony, to be punished by hard labor in the 
penitentiary ; and, even where nothing has 
occurred beyond the challenge, all the parties to 
it, whether givers or receivers, are declared guilty 
of high crime and misdemeanor, also to be 
punished by hard labor in the penitentiary. Of 
course, every menace of a duel in Congress sets 
this law at defiance. And yet the Senators, who 
thus openly disregard a law sanctioned by 
the Constitution and commended by morality, 
presume to complain on this floor because other 
Senators disregard the Fugitive Slave Bill, a 
statute which, according to the profound convic- 
tions of large numbers, is as unconstitutional as 
it is offensive to the moral sense. Let Senators 
who are so clamorous for " the enforcement of 
law," begin by enforcing the statute which de- 
clares the Duel to be a felony. At least, let the 
statute cease to be a dead letter in this Chamber. 
But this is too much to expect while Slavery 
prevails here, for the Duel is a part of that Sys- 
tem of Violence which has its origin in Sla-very. 

But it is when aroused by the Slave Question 
in Congress that Slave-masters have most truly 
shown themselves ; and here again I shall speak 
only of what has already passed into history. 
Even in that earliest debate, in the First Congress 
after the Constitution, on the memorial of Dr. 
Franklin, simply called upon Congress *' to step 
to the verge of its powers to discourage every 
species of traffic in our fellow men," the Slave- 
masters became angry, indulged in sneers at " the 
men in the gallery," being Quakers and Aboli- 



tionists, and, according to the faithful historian, 
Hildreth, poured out " torrents of abuse, " while 
one of them began the charge so often since di- 
rected against all Anti Slavery men, by declaring 
his astonishment that Dr. Franklin had ''given 
countenance to an application which called upon 
Congress, in explicit terms, to break a solemn 
compact to which he had hinaself been a party," 
when it was obvious that Dr. Franklin had done 
no such thing. This great man was soon sum- 
moned away by death, but not until he had fas- 
tened upon this debate an andying condemna- 
tion, by ])ortraying, with his matchless pen, a 
scene at the Divan at Algiers, where a corsair 
Slave-dealer, insisting upon the enslavement of 
White Christians, is made to repeat the Congres- 
sional speech of an American Slave-master. 

But these displays of Violence have naturally 
increased with the intensity of the discussion. 
Impelled to be severe, but with little appreciation 
of the finer forms of debate, they could not be 
severe except by violating the rules of debate ; 
not knowing that there is a serener power than 
any found in personalities, and that all severity 
which transcends the rules of debate, becomes 
disgusting as the talk of Yahoos, and harms him 
only who degrades himself to be its mouth- 
piece. Of course, on such occasions, the cause 
of Slavery, amidst all seeming triuaiphs, has 
lost, and Truth has gained. 

It was against John Quincy Adams that this 
violence was first directed in full force. To a 
character spotless as snow, and to universal 
attainments as a scholar, this illustrious citizen 
added experience in all the eminent posts of the 
Republic, which he had filled with an ability and 
integrity, now admitted even by his enemies, and 
which impartial history cannot forget. Having 
been President of the United States, he entered 
the House of Representatives at the period when 
the Slave Question in its revival first began to 
occupy the public attention. In all the com- 
pleteness of his nature, he became the represen- 
tative of Human Freedom. The first struggle 
occurred on the right of petition, which Slave- 
masters, with characteristic tyranny, sought to 
suppress. This was resisted by the venerable 
patriot, and what he did was always done with 
his whole heart. Then was poured upon him 
abuse as from a caii,. Slave-masters, ** foaming 
out their shame," became conspicuous, not less 
for an avowal of sentiments at which Civilization 
blushed, than for an effrontery of manner where 
the accidental legislator was lost in the natural 
overseer, and the lash of the plantation resound- 
ed in the voice. 

In an address to his constituents, 17th Sep- 
tember, 1842, Mr. Adams thus frankly describes 
the treatment he had experienced : 

" I never can take part in any debate upon an important 
subject, be it only upon a mere abstraction, but a pacfe 
opens upon me of personal invective in return. Language 
has no word of reproach and railing that is not hurled at 
me." 

And in the same speech he gives a glimpse of 
Slave-masters : 

" Where the South cannot eflfect her object by brow-beat 
ing, she wheedles." 

On another occasion he said, with his accus- 
tomed power : 

" Insult, bullying and threat, characterize the Slavehold • 
ers in Congress ; talk, timidity, and submission, the Eepie- 
sentatives from the Free States." 



21 



Nor were the Slave-masters contented with the 
violence of words. True to the instincts of Sla- 
very, they threatened personaiindignity of every 
kind, and even assassination. And here South 
Carolina naturally took the lead. 

Tile Charleston Mercury, which always speaks 
the true voice of Slavery, said in 1837 : 

"Public opinion in the Soutli would now, we are sure, 
justify an immediate resort to force by the Southern dele- 
gation, even on the floor of Congress', were they forlhwith 
to seize and drag from the Hall any man who dared to in- 
sult them, as that ec-centric old showman, John Quincy 
Adams, has dared to do." 

And at a public dinner at Walterborough, in 
South Carolina, on the 4th of July, 1842, the 
following toast, afterwards preserved by Mr. 
Adams in one of his speeches, was drunk with 
unbounded applause : 

" May we never want a Democrat to trip up the heels of 
a Federalist, or b hangman to prepare a halter for John 
Quincy Adams! [Nine cheers.]" 

A Slave-master from South Carolina, Mr. 
Waddy Thompson, in debate in the House of 
Repi-esentatives, threatened the venerable patriot 
with the "penitentiary;" and another Slave- 
master, Mr. Marshall of Kentucky, insisted that 
he should be '• silenced V Ominous word! full 
of suggestion to the bludgeon-bearers of Slavery. 
But the great representative of Freedom stood 
iirm, Meanwliile Slavery assumed more and 
more the part of the giant Maul in the Pilgrim's 
Progress, who continued with his club breaking 
the skulls of pilgrims, until he was slain by Mr. 
Great Heart, making way for the other pilgrims, 
Mr. Valiant for Truth, Mr. Standfast, and Mr. 
Honest. 

Next to John Quincy Adams, no person in 
Congress has been more conspicuous for lonw- 
continued and patriotic services against Slavery, 
than Joshua R. Griddings, of Ohio ; nor have any 
such services received in higher degree that 
homage which is found in the personal and most 
vindictive assaults of Slave-masters. For nearly 
twenty years he sat in the House of Representa- 
tives, bearing his testimony always loftily, and 
never shrinking, though exposed to the grossest 
brutality. In a recent public addre.ss at New 
York, he has himself recounted some of these 
instances. 

On the presentation by him of resolutions 
affirming that Slavery was a local institution, and 
could not exist outside of the Slave States, and 
applying this principle to the case of the Creole, 
the House *= caught" the South Carolina fever. 
A proposition censuring him was introduced by 
Slave-masters, and pressed to a vote under the 
operation of the previous question without giving 
him a moment for explanation, or reply. This 
glaring outrage upon freedom of debate, was re- 
dressed at once by the constituency of Mr. bid- 
dings, who returned him again to his seat. From 
that time the rage of the Slave-masters against 
him was constant. Here is his own brief ac- 
count : 

'' 1 will not speak of the time when Dawson, of Louisiana, 
drew a bowie-knife for my assassination. I was afterwards 
speaking wiih regard to a certain transaction in which ne- 
groes were concerned in Georgia, when Mr. Black, of 
Georgia, raising Jiis bludgeon, and standing in front of my 
seat, saitl to me, 'If you repeat that language again, I will 
knock you down.' It was a solemn moment for me I had 
never been knoc^^ed down, and having some curiosity upon 
that sutyect, I repeated the language. Then Mr. Dawson, 
of Louisiana, the same who liad drawn the bowe-kidfe, 

f laced his hand in his pocket and said, with an oath which 
will not repeat, that he would shoot me, at the same time 
cocking ihe pistol, so that all around me could hear it 
click." 



Listening to these horrors, ancient stories of 
Barbari.'sm seem all outdone ; and the " viper- 
broth," which was a favorite decoction in a bar- 
barous age, seems to have become the daily 
drink of American Slave-masters. The blas- 
pheming madness of the witches in Macbeth, 
dancing round the cauldron, and dropping into 
it "sweltered venom sleeping got," and every 
other '•charm of powerful trouble," was all 
renewed. But Mr. Giddings, strong in the con- 
sciousness of right, knew the dignity of his posi- 
tion. He knew that it is honorable always to 
serve the cause of Liberty, and that it is a privi- 
lege to suffer for this cause. Reproach, con- 
tumely, violence even unto death, are rewards, 
not punishments ; and clearly the indignities 
which you offer can excite no shame except for 
their authors. 

Besides these eminent Instances, others may 
be mentioned, showing the personalities to which 
Senators and representatives have been exposed, 
when undertaking to speak for Freedom. And 
truth compels me to add, that there is too much 
evidence that these have been aggravated by the 
circumstance that, where persons notoriously 
f ejected an appeal to the Duel, such insults could 
be offered with impunity. 

Here is an instance. In 1848, Mr. Hale, the 
Senator from jN^w Hampshire, who still contin- 
ues an honor to this body, introduced into the 
Senate a bill for tlie protection of property in the 
District of Columbia, especially against mob-vio- 
lence. In the course of the debate that ensued, 
Mr. Foote, a Slave-master from Mississippi, thus 
menaced him : 

" I invite the Senator to the State of Mississippi, and will 
tfll him beforehand, in all honesty, that he could not go ten 
miles into the interior before he would grace one of the 
tallest trees of the forest, with a rope around his neck, 
with the approbation of every virtuous and patriotic 
citizen, and that, if necessary,. / should myself assist in 
the operation.'" 

That this bloody threat may not seem to stand 
alone, I add two others. 

Mr. Hammond, of South Carolina, now a Sen- 
ator, is reported as saying in the House of Rep- 
resentatives : 

'• I warn the abolitionists, ignorant, infatuated barbari- 
ans as they are, that if chance shall tlirow any of them into 
our hands, they may expect afelun''s death!" 

And in 1841, Mr. Payne, a Slave-master from 
Alabama, in the course of debate in the House 
of Representatives, alluding to the Abolitionists, 
among whom he insisted the Postmaster General 
ought to be included, declared that — 

" He would put the brand of Cain upon them— yes, the 
mark of hell— and if they came to the South he would harig 
them like dogs!" 

And these words were applied to men who 
simply expressed the recorded sentiments of 
Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin. 

Even duriu'-i the present session of Congress, 
I find, in the Congressional Globe, tlie following 
interruptions of Mr. Lovejoy, when speaking on 
Slavery. I do not characterize them ; but simply 
cite them : 

By Mr. Barksdalb, of Mississippi : 

'• Order that black-hearted scoundrel and nigger-stealing 
thief to take his seat." 

By Mr. Boyce, of South Carolina, addressing 
Mr. Lovejoy : 
" Then behave yourself." 

By Mr. Gartrell, of Georgia, (in his seat:) 
" The man is crazy." 



22 



By Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi, again : 
" No, sir, you stand there to-day an infamous, perjured 

■villain" 

By Mr. Ashmore,. of South Carolina: 

" Yes ; he is a perjured villain, and he perjures himself 

every hour he occupies a seat on this floor." 

By Mr. Sixgleton, of Missi.ssippi : 
"And a negro-thief into the bargain." 
By Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi, again : 
" I hope my colleague will hold no parley with that per- 
jured negro-thief." 
By Mr. Singleton, of Mississippi, again : 
"No. sir ; any gentleman shall have time, but not such a 
mean, despicable Avretch as that ! " 

By Mr. Martin, of Virginia: 

" And if you come among us, Ave will do with you as we 
did with .lohii Brown— hang you ashigh as Haman. I say 
that as a Virginian," 

But enough — enough ; and I now turn from 
this branch of the argument with a single re- 
mark. While exhibiting the Character of Slave- 
masters, these numerous instances — and they 
might be multiplied indefinitely — attest the weak- 
ness of their cause. It requires no special talent 
to estimate the insignificance of an argument that 
can be supported only by violence. The scholar 
will not forget the story told by Lucian of the 
colloquy between Jupiter and a simple country- 
man. They talked with ease and freedom until 
they differed, when the angry god at once men- 
aced his honest opponent with a thunder bolt. 
"Ah, ah!" said the clown, with perfect compo- 
sure, ' ' now, Jupiter, I know you are wrong. You 
are always wrong when you appeal to your 
thunder.'"' And permit me to say, that every 
appeal, whether to the Duel, the bludgeon, or the 
revolver — every menace of personal violence, 
and every outrage of language, besides disclos- 
ing a hideous Barbarism, also discloses the 
fe'''ered nervousness of a cause already humbled 
in debate. 

(4.) Much as has been said to pxliibit the 
Character of Slave-masters, the work would be 
incomplete if I failed to point out that uncon- 
sciousness of the fatal influence of Slavery, which 
completes the evidence of the Barbarism under 
which they live. Nor am I at liberty to decline 
this topic ; but I shall be brief. 

That Senators should openly declare Slavery 
" ennobling," at least to the master, and also '"the 
black marble key-stone of our national arch," 
would excite wonder if it were not explained by 
the examples of history. Thert; are men, who, 
ill the spirit of paradox, make themselves the 
partisans of a bad cause, as Jerome Cardan ^vrote 
an Encominm on Nero. But where there is no 
disposition to paradox, it is natural that a cher- 
ished practice should bind those who are under 
its influence ; nor is there any end to these exag- 
gerations. According to Thucydides, piracy in 
the early ages of Greece was alike widespread and 
honorable ; so much so that Telemachus and 
Ment\.>r, on landing at Mycenge, were asked by 
Nestor if they were •' pirates " — precisely as the 
stranger in South Carolina might be asked if he 
were a Slave-master. Kidnapping, too, which 
was a kindred indulgence, was openly avowed, 
and I doubt not held to be " ennobling." Next 
to the unconsciousness which is noticed in child- 
hood, is the unconsciousness of Barbarism. The 
real Barbarian is as unconscious as an infant ; 



and the Slave-master shows much of the same 
character. No New Zealander exults in his tat- 
too, no savage of the Northwest coast exults in 
his flat head, more than the Slave-master in these 
latter days — and always, of course, with honor- 
able exceptions — exults in his unfortunate con- 
dition. The Slave-master hug.s his disgusting 
practice as the Carib of the Gulf hugged Can- 
nibalism, and as Brigham Young now hugs 
Polygamy. The delusion of the " Goitre " is 
repeated. This prodigious swelling of the neck, 
constituting "a hideous wallet of flesh," pendu- 
lous upon the breast, is common to the popula- 
tion on the slopes of the Alps ; but, accustomed 
to this deformity, the sufferer comes to regard it 
with pride, as Slave-masters with us regard Sla- 
very, and it is said that those who have no 
swelling are laughed at and called " goose-neck- 
ed." 

With knowledge comes distrust and the mod- 
est consciousness of imperfection ; but the pride 
of Barbarism has no such limitations. It dilates 
in the thin air of ignorance, and makes boasts. 
Surely, if these illustrations are not entirely in- 
applicable, then must we find in the boasts of 
Slave-masters new occasion to regret the influence 
of Slavery, 

It is this same influence which renders Slave- 
masters insensible to those characters which are 
among the true glories of the Republic ; which 
makes them forget that Jefferson, who wrote the 
Declaration of Independence, and Washington, 
who commanded its armies, were Abolitionists ; 
which renders them insensible to the inspiring 
words of the one, and to the commanding exam- 
ple of the other. Of these great men, It is the 
praise, well deserving perpetual mention, and 
only gTudged by a m;ilign influence, that reared 
amidst Slavery, they did not hesitate to condemn 
it To the present debate, Jefferson, in repeated 
utterances, alive with the fire of genius and truth, 
has contributed the most important testimony 
for Freedom ever pronounced in this hemisphere, 
in words equal to the cause, and Washington, 
often quoted as a Slave-master, in the solemn 
dispositions of his last Will and Testament, has 
contributed an example which is beyond even 
the words of Jefferson. Do not, sir, call him a 
Slave-master, who entered into the presence of 
his Maker only as the Emancipator of his slaves. 
The difference between such men and the Slave- 
masters whom I expose to-day is so precise that 
it cannot be mistaken. The first look down upon 
Slavery ; the second look up to Slavery. The 
first, recognizing its wrong, were at once liberated 
from its pernicious influences, while the latter, 
upholding it as right and "ennobling," must 
naturally draw from it motives o5\3onduct. The 
first, conscious of the character of Slavery, were 
not misled by it ; the second, dwelling in uncon- 
sciousness of its true character, surrender blindly 
to its barbarous tendencies, and verifying the 
words of the poet, 

" So perfect is their misery, 

Not once perceived their foul disfigurement, 
But boast themselves more comely" than before." 

Mr. President, it is time to close this branch 
of the argument. The Barbarism of Slavery 
has been now exposed, first, in the Law of Sla- 
very, with its five pretensions, founded on the 
assertion of property in man, the denial of the 
conjugal relation, the infraction of the parental 



relation, tlie exclusion from knowledge, and tlie 
robbery of the fruits of another's labor, all these 
having the single object of compelling men to 
work ivithout wages, while its Barbarism was still 
further attested by tracing the law in its origiu to 
barbarous Africa ; and secondly, it has been ex- 
posed in a careful examination of the economical 
results of Slavery, illustrated by a contrast be- 
tween the Free States and the Slave States, sus- 
tained by official figures. From this exposure 
of Slavery, I proceeded to consider its influences 
on Slave-masters ; whose true character stands 
confessed, first, in the Law of Slavery, which is 
their work ; next, in the relations between them 
and their slaves, maintained by three inhuman 
instruments ; next, in their relations with each 
other, and with society, and here we have seen 
them at home under the immediate influence of 
Slavery — also in the communities of which they 
are a part — practicing violence, and pushing it 
everywhere, in street fight and duel ; especially 
raging against all who question the pretensions 
of Slavery ; entering even into the Free States ; 
but not in lawless outbreaks only ; also in official 
acts, as of Georgia and of South Carolina, with 
regard to two Massachusetts citizens ; and then, 
ascending in audacity, entering the Halls of Con- 
gress, where thej^ have raged as at home, against 
all who set themselves against their assumptions, 
while the whole gloomj^ array of unquestionable 
facts has been closed by portraying the melan- 
choly unconsciousness which constitutes one of 
the distinctive features of this Barbarism. 

Such is my answer to the assumption of fact 
in behalf of Slavery by Senators on the other 
side. But before passing to that other assump- 
tion of constitutional law, wliich constitutes the 
second branch of this discussion, I add testimony 
to the influence of Slavery on Slave-masters in 
other countries, which is too important to be neg- 
lected, and may properly find a place here. 

Among those who have done most to press 
forward in Russia that sublime act of emancipa- 
tion by which the present Emperor is winning 
lustre, not only for his country, but for our age, 
is M. Tourguenefl". Originally a Slave-master, 
himself, with numerous slaves, and residing 
where Slavery prevailed, he saw, with the in- 
stincts of a noble character, the essential Barbar- 
ism of this relation, and in an elaborate work on 
Russia, which is now before me, he exposed it 
with rare ability and courage. Thus he speaks 
of its influence on Slave-masters : 

"But if Slavery degrades the slave, it degrades more the 
master. This is an (4d adage, and long observations have 
proved to me that this adage is not a paradox. In fact, how 
can that man respect his own dignity, his own riglits. who 
has learnedndtto respect either the riglits or the digailyof 
his fellow-man ? What control can tiie nigral and religions 
sentiments have over a man who sees himself invested with 
apower so eminently contrary to morals and religion? The 
continnal ex. reise of an unjust claim, even when it is mod- 
erated, finishes by corrupting the character of the man and 
spoiling hi? judgreent. * * * The possession of a slave 
being the result1)f injustice, the relations of the master with 
the slave cannot be otht rwise than a succession of injustices. 
Among good masters (and it is agreed to call so those who 
do notabuse their power asmucli as they might) thtse re- 
lations are clothed with forms less repugnant than among 
others; but here the difference sto| s V» lio ciuld remain 
always pure, when carried away by his disposition, excited 
by his temper, drawn by caprice' he can wilh impunity 
oppress, insult, humiliate h;s fellows. And, let it be carefully 
remarked, that intelligence, civiliz aion, do not avail. The 
enlightened man, the civilized man, is none the less a man; 
that he should not oppress, it is necessa y that it should be 
impossible for him to oppress. All men cannot, like Louis 



XIV, throw their stick from the window, when they feel a 
desire to strike."— Z/aiJwssi'e et Les Russes. vol. II, pages 
157-'8. 

Another authority, unimpeachable at all points, 
whose fortune it has been, from extensive travels, 
to see Slavery in the most various forms, and 
Slave-masters under the most various condi- 
tions — I refer to the great African traveller, Dr. 
Livingstone — thus touches the character of Slave- 
masters : 

" I can never cease to be unfeignedly thankful that I was 
not born in a land of slaves. No one can understand the 
unutterable meanness of the slave system on the minds of 
those who, hut for the strange obliquity lehich prevents 
them from feding the degradation of not being gentlemen 
enough to pay for services rendered, would be equal iu 
virtue to ourselves. Fraud becomes as natural to them 
'a< paying one's way' is to the rest of mankind." — Liv- 
ingstone's Travels, chap. 1, ^Ja^e 33. 

Thus does the experience of Slavery in 
other countries confirm the sad experience among 
us. 

Second Assumption. — Discarding now all the 
presumptuous boasts for Slavery, and bearing in 
mmd its essential Barbarism, I come to consider 
that second assumption of Senators on the other 
side, which is, of course, inspired by the first, 
even if not its immediate consequence, that, 
under the Constitution, Slave-masters ma}^ take 
their slaves into the national Territories, and 
there continue to hold them, as at home iii the 
Slave States ;. and that this would be the case in 
any territory newly acquired, by purchase or by 
war, as of Mexico on the South, or Canada on the 
North. 

And here I begin by the remark, that as the 
assumption of constitutional law is inspired by 
the assumption of fact with regard to the '• en- 
nobling " character of Slavery, so it must lose 
much if not all of its force when the latter as- 
sumption is shown to be false, as has been done 
to-day. 

When Slavery is seen to be the Barbarism 
which it is, there are few who would not cover it 
from sight, rather than insist upon sending it 
abroad with the flag of the E-epublic. It is only 
because people liave been insensible to its true 
character that they have tolerated for a moment 
its exorbitant pretensions. Therefore this long 
exposition, where Slavery has been made to 
stand forth in its five-fold Barbarism, with the 
single object of compelling men to work without 
wages, naturally prepares the way to consider 
the assumption of constitutional law. 

This assumption may be described as an at- 
tempt to Africanize the Constitution, by intro- 
ducing into it the barbarous Law of Slavery, 
derived as we have seen originally from barba- 
rous Africa ; and then, through such Africaniza- 
tion of the Constittition, to Africanize the Ter- 
ritories, and to Africanize the National Govern- 
ment. In using this language to express the 
obvious effect of this assumption, I borrow a 
suggestive term, first employed by a Portuguese 
writer at the beginning of this century, when 
protesting against the spread of Slavery in Brazil. 
[See Koster's Travels in Brazil, vol. ii, p. 248.) 
Analyze the as.-:;umption, and it will be found to 
stand on two pretensions, either of which failing 
the assumption fails also. These two are — first, 
the African pretension of property in man ; and. 
secondly, the pretension that such property ,is 
recognized iu the Constitution. 

With regard to the first of the pretensions, l 



24 



might simply refer to what I have ah-eady said 
at an earlier stage of this argument. But I should 
do injustice to the part it has been made to play 
in this controversy, if I did not again expose it. 
Then I sought particularly to show its Barbar- 
ism ; now I shall show something more. 

Property implies an owner and a thing owned. 
On the one side is a human being, and on the 
other side a thing. But the very idea of a human 
being necessarily excludes the idea of property 
in that being, just as the very idea of a thing 
necessarily excludes the idea of a human being. 
It is clear that a thing cannot be a human being, 
and it is equally clear that a human being can- 
not be a thing. And the law itself, when it 
adopts the phrase, " relation of master and 
slave," confesses its reluctance to sanction the 
claim of property. It shrinks from the preten- 
sion of Senators, and satisfies itself witli a formula 
which does not openly degrade human nature. 

If this property does exist, out of what title 
is it derived ? Under what ordinance of Na- 
ture or of Nature's God is one human being 
stamped an owner and another stamped a thing ? 
God is nr respecter of persons. Where is the 
sanction for this respect of certain persons to a 
degree which becomes outrage to other persons ? 
God is the Father of the Human Family, and we 
are all his children. Where then is the sanction 
of this pretension by which a brother lays vio- 
lent hands upon a brother ? To ask these ques- 
tions is humiliating ; but it is clear there can be 
but one response. There is no sanction for such 
pretension ; no ordinance for it, or title. On all 
grounds of reason, and waiving all questions of 
'• positive " statute, the Vermont Judge was nobly 
right, when, rejecting the claim of a Slave-master, 
he said : " No ; not until you show a Bill of 
Sale from the Almighty." Nothing short of this 
impossible link in the chain of title would do. 
I know something of the great judgments by 
which the jurisprudence of our country has 
been illustrated ; but I doubt if there is any- 
thing in the wisdom of Marshall, the learning 
of Story, or the completeness of Kent, which will 
brighten with time like this honest decree. 

The intrinsic feebleness of this pretension is 
apparent in the intrinsic feebleness of the argu- 
ments by which it is maintained. These are two- 
fold, and both have been put forth in recent de- 
"bate by the Senator from Mississippi. [Mr. Davis.] 
The first is the alleged inferiority of the African 
race ; an argument which, while surrendering to 
Slavery a whole race, leaves it uncertain whether 
the same principle may not be applied to other 
races, as to the polished Japanese, who are now 
the guests of the nation, and even to persons of 
obvious inferiority in the white race. Indeed, 
the latter pretension is openly made in other 
quarters. The Richmond Enquirer, a leading 
journal of Slave-masters, declai-es, " The princi- 
ple of Slavery is in itself right, and does net 
depend on difference of complexion^ And a 
leading writer among Slave-masters, George 
Fitzhugh, of Virginia, in his Sociology for the 
South, declares, " Slavery, 6/acA-o?-w/ii7e, is right 
and necessary. Nature has made tlie weak in 
mind or body for slaves." And in the same vein 
a Democratic paper of South Carolina has said, 
" Slavery is the natural and normal condition of 
the laboring man, white orhJack." 

These more extravagant pretensions reveal still 
further the feebleness of the pretension put forth 



by the Senator; while instances accumulating 
constantly, attest the difficulty of discriminating 
between the two races. IMr. Paxton, of Virginia, 
tells us, that " the best blood in Virginia Hows in 
the veins of the slave ; " and fugitive slaves have 
been latterly advertised as possessing " a round 
face," "blue eyes," "flaxen hair," and as 
" escaping under the pretence of being a white 
man." 

This is not the time to enter upon the great 
question of race, in the various lights of religion, 
history, and science. Sure I am that they who 
understand it best, will be least disposed to the 
pretension, which on the assumed ground of 
inferiority would condemn one race to be the 
property of another. If the African race be 
Inferior, as is alleged, then is it the unquestiona- 
ble duty of a Christian Civilivation to lift it from 
its degradation, not by the bludgeon and the 
chain, not by this barbarous- pretension of own- 
ership ; but by a generous charity, which shall 
be measured precisely by the extent of its 
inferiority. 

The second argument put forward for this 
pretension, and twice repeated by the Senator 
from Mississippi, is, that the Africans are the 
posterity of Ham, the son of Noah through 
Canaan, who was cursed by Noah, to be the 
" servant" — that is the word employed — of his 
brethern, and that this malediction has fallen 
upon all his descendants , who are accordingly de- 
voted by God to perpetual bondage, and not only 
in the third and fourth generations, but through- 
out all succeeding time. Surely, when the 
Senator quoted Scripture to enfore the claim of 
Slave-masters he did not intend a jest. And yet 
it is hard to suppose him in earnest. The Sena- 
tor is Chairman of the Committee on Military 
Affairs, in which he is doubtless experienced. He 
may, perhaps, set a squadron in the field, but he 
has evidently considered very little the text of 
Scripture on which he relies. The Senator 
assumes, that it has fixed the doom of the colored 
race, leaving untouched the white race. Perhaps 
he does not know that, in the worst da;ys of the 
Polish aristocracy, this same argument was 
adopted as the excuse for holding white serfs in 
bondage precisely as it is now put forward by the 
Senator, and that even to this day the angry 
Polish noble addresses his white peasant as the 
" son of Ham." 

It hardly comports with the gravity of this 
debate to dwell on such an argument, and yet I 
cannot go wrong if, for the sake of amuch-injut- 
ed race, I brush it away. To justify the Senator 
in his application of this ancient curse, he must 
maintain at least five different propositions, as 
essential links in the chain of the Afric-American 
slave : Ji7'st, that by this malediction, Canaan 
himself was actually changed into a " chattel," 
whereas he is simply made the " servant " of his 
brethren ; secondly, that not merely Canaan, but 
all his posterity, to the remotest generation, was 
so changed, whereas the language has Jio such 
extent ; thirdly, that the Afric-Ameidcan actually 
belongs to the posterity of Canaan — an ethnologi- 
cal assumption absurdly difficult to establish ; 
fourthly, that each of the descendants of Shem 
and Japheth has a right to hold an Afric-Ame- 
rican fellow-man as a "chattel" — a proposition 
which finds no semblance of support ; and 
fifthly, that every Slave-master is truly descended 
from Shem or Japheth — a pedigree which no 



25 



anxiety can establish ! This plain analysis, whicli 
may fitly excite a smile, shows the five-fold 
absurdity of an attempt to found this pretension 
on 

"Any successive title, long and dark, 
Drawn from the mouldy rolls of Noah's ark" 

From the character of these two arguments 
for property in man, I am brought again to its 
denial. 

It is natural that Senators who pretend that, 
by the law of nature, man may hold property in 
man, should find this pretension in the Consti- 
tution. But the pretension is as much without 
foundation in the Constitution as it is without 
foundatioa in nature. It is not too much to say 
that there is not one sentence, phrase, or word — 
not a single suggestion, hint, or equivocation, 
even — out of which any such pretension can be 
implied ; while great national acts and important 
contemporaneous declarations in the Convention 
which framed the Constitution, in different forms 
of language, and also controlling rules of inter- 
pretation, render this pretension impossible. 
Partisans, taking counsel of their desires, find in 
the Constitution, as in the Scriptures, what tliey 
incline to find ; and never was this more apparent 
than when Slave-masters deceive themselves so 
far as to find in the Constitution a pretension 
which exists only in their own souls. 

Looking juridically for one moment at this 
question, we shall be brought to the conclusion, 
according to the admission of courts and jurists, 
first in Europe, and then in our own country, 
that Slavery can be derived from no doubtful 
word or mere pretension, but only from clear 
and special recognition. "The state of Slavery," 
said Lord Mansfield, pronouncing judgment in 
the great case of Somersett, '• is of such a nature 
that it is incapable of being introduced on any 
reasons, moral or poiilieal, but only by positive 
latv. It is so odious, that nothing can be sutfered 
to support it but Positive Law " — that is, ex- 
press words of a written text ; and this principle 
which commends itself to the enlightened reason, 
has been adopted by several courts in tlie Slave 
States. Of course, every leaning luust be i^gamst 
Slavery. A pretension so peculiar and ofi'ensive 
— so hostile to reason — so repugnant to the laws 
of nature and the inborn Rights of Man ; which, 
in all its five-fold wrong, has no other object than 
to compel fellow-men to work without wages ; 
snch a pretension so tyrannical, so unjust, so mean, 
so barbarous, can find no place in any system of 
Grovernment, unless by virtue of positive sanc- 
tion. It can spring from no doubtful phrases. 
It must be declared by unambiguous words, 
incapable of a double sense. 

At tlie adoption of the Constitution, this rule, 
promulgated in the Court of King's Bench, by 
the voice of the most finished magistrate in 
English history, was as well known in our coun- 
try as any principle of the common law ; espe- 
cially was it known to the eminent lawyers in the 
Convention ; nor is it too much to say that the 
Constitution was framed with this rule on Sla- 
very as a guide. And the Siipreme Court of the 
United States at a later day, in the case of United 
States V. Fisher, 2 Cranch, 390, by the voice of 
Chief Justice Marshall, promulgated this same 
rule, in words stronger even than those of Lord 
Mansfield, saying : " Where rights ai'e infringed, 
where fundamental principles are overthrown, 
where the general system of the laws is departed 



from, the legislative intention must be expressed 
with irresistibJe clearness, to induce a court of 
justice to suppose a design to efi'ect such object." 
It is well known, however, that these two decla- 
rations are little more than new forms for the 
ancient rule of the common law, as expressed by 
Fortescue : Impius et cj'udelis judicandvs est 
qui Lihertati non favet ; He is to be adjudged 
impious and cruel who does not favor Liberty ; 
and, as expressed by Blackstone, " The law is 
always ready to catch at anything in favor of 
Liberty." 

But, as no prescription runs against the King, 
so no prescription is allowed to run against Sla- 
very, while all the early victories of Freedom 
are set aside by the Slave-masters of to-day. The 
prohibition of Slavery in the Missouri Territory, 
and all the precedents, legislative and judicial, for 
the exercise of this power, admitted from the 
beginning until now, have been overturned ; but 
at last, bolder grown. Slave-masters do not hesi- 
tate to assail that principle of jurisprudence 
which makes Slavery the creature of " positive 
law " alone, to be upheld only by words of " irre- 
sistible clearness." The case of Somersdt, in 
which this great rule was declared, has been im- 
peached on this floor, as the Declaration of 
Independence has been impeached also. And 
here the Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Benjamin] 
has taken the lead. He has dwelt on the asser- 
tion that, in the history of English law, there 
were earlier cases, where a contrary principle was 
declared. But permit me to say that no such 
cases, even if they exist in authentic reports, can 
impair the influence of this well-considered au- 
thority. The Senator knows well that an old 
and barbarous case is a poor answer to a principle, 
which is brought into activity by the demands of 
an advancing Civilization, and which once recog- 
nized can never be denied ; that jurisprudence is 
not a dark lantern, shining in a narrow circle, 
and never changing, but a gladsome light, which, 
slowly emerging trom original darkness, grows 
and spreads with human improvement, until at 
last it becomes as broad and general as the Light 
of Day. When the Senator, in this age — leaguing 
all his forces — undertakes to drag down that im- 
mortal principle, which made Slavery impossible 
in England, as, thank (rod I it makes Slavery im- 
possible under the Constitution, he vainly tugs 
to drag down a luminary from the sky. 

The enormity of the pretension that Slavery 
is sanctioned by the Constitution becomes still 
more apparent, when we read the Constitution 
in the light of great national acts and of con- 
temporaneous declarations. First comes the Dec- 
laration of Independence, the illuminated initial 
letter of our history, which in familiar words 
announces that " all men are created equal; that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights ; that among these are Life, 
Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that to 
secure these rights governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the 
consent of the governed." Nor does this Decla- 
ration, binding the consciences of all who enjoy 
the privileges it secured, stand alone. There is 
another national act, less known, but in itself a 
key to the first, when, at the successful close of 
the Revolution, the Continental Congress, in a 
solemn address to the people, loftily announced: 
" Let it be remembered, that it has ever been the 
pride and the boast of America, that the rights 



26 



for which, she has contended were the rights' of 
human nature By the blessing of the Author 
of these rights, they have prevailed over all 
opposition, and form the Basis of thirteen inde- 
pendent States." Now, whatever may be the 
privileges of States in their individual capacities, 
within their several local jurisdictions, no power 
can be attributed to the nation, in the absence 
of positive unequivocal grant, inconsistent with 
these two national declarations. Here is the na- 
tional heart, the national soul, the national will, 
the national voice, which must inspire our inter- 
pretation of the Constitution, and enter into and 
diffuse itself through all the national legislation. 
Such are the commanding authorities which 
constitute " Life. Liberty, and the Pursuit of 
Happiness." and in more general words, "the 
Rights of Human Nature, " without distinction 
of race, or recognition of the curse of Ham, as 
the basis of our national institutions. They need 
no additional support. 

But, in strict harmony with these are the many 
utterances in the Convention which framed the 
Constitution : of Gouverneur Morris, of Penn- 
sylvania, who announced that " he loould never 
concur in iipholding do7nestic Slavery; it was a 
nefarious institution ; " of Elbridge Gerry, of 
Massachusetts, who said " that we had nothing to 
do with the conduct of the States as to Slavery, 
but we ought to be careful not to give any sanction 
to itf of Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, of 
Connecticut, and Mr. Gorham, of Massachusetts, 
who all concurred with Mr. Gerry; and especially 
of Mr. Madison, of Virginia, who, in mild juridi- 
cal phrase, " thought it wrong to admit tin the 
Constitution the idea that there could be 
property in man." And lastly, as if to complete 
the elaborate work of Freedom, and to give ex- 
pression to all these utterances, the word " servi- 
tude," which had been allowed in the clause on 
the apportionment of Representatives, was struck 
out, and the word " service " substituted instead. 
This final exclusion from the Constitution of the 
idea of property in man was on the motion of 
Mr. Randolph, of Virginia ; and the reason as- 
signed for the substitution, according to Mr. 
Madison, in his authentic report of the debate, 
was, that " the former was thought to express 
the condition of slaves, and the latter the obliga- 
tions of free 'persons.'''' Thus, at every point, by 
great national declarations, by frank utterances 
in the Convention, and by a positive act in ad- 
justing the text of the Constitution, was the idea 
of property in man unequivocally rejected. 

This pretension, which may be dismissed as 
utterly baseless, becomes absurd when it is con- 
sidered to what result it necessarily conducts. 
If the Barbarism of Slavery, in all its five-fold 
wrong, is really embodied in the Constitution, so 
as to be beyond the reach of prohibition, either 
Congressional or local, in the Territories, then, 
for the same reason, it must be beyond the reach 
of prohibition or abolition, even by local autho- 
rity in the States themselves, and, just so long as 
the Constitution continues unchanged. Territories 
and States alike must be open to all its blasting 
influences. And yet this pretension, which, in its 
natural consequences, overturns State Rights, is 
put forward by Senators who profess to be the 
special guardians of State Rights. 

Nor does this pretension derive any support 
from the much-debated clause in the Constitution 
for the rendition of fugitives from " service or 



labor," on which so much stress is constantly 
put. But I do not occupy your time now on 
this head, for two reasons — first, because, having 
already on a former occasion exhibited with great 
fullness the character of that clause, I am un- 
willing now thus incidentally to open the ques- 
tion upon it ; and secondly, because, whatever 
may be its character — admitting that it confers 
power upon Congress — and admitting also, what 
is often denied, that, in defiance of commanding 
rules of interpretation, the equivocal words there 
employed have that " irresistible clearness " 
which is necessary in taking away Human 
Rights — yet nothing can be clearer than that the 
fugitives, whosoever they may be, are regarded 
under the Constitution as persons, and not as 
property. 

I disdain to dwell on that other argument, 
brought forward by Senators, who, denying the 
Equality of Man, speciously assert the Equality 
of the States ; and from this principle, true in 
many respects, jump to the conclusion, that 
Slave-masters are entitled, in the name of Equal- 
ity, to take their slaves into the National Terri- 
tories, under the solemn safeguards of the Con- 
stitution. But this argument comes back to the 
first pretension, that slaves are recognised as 
" property " in the Constitution. To that pre- 
tension, already amply exposed, we are always 
brought, nor can any sounding allegations of 
State Equality avoid it. And yet, this very argu- 
ment betrays the inconsistency of its authors. 
If persons held to service in the Slave States are 
" property " under the Constitution, then, under 
the provision — known as the "three-fifths" 
rule — which founds representation in the other 
House on such persons, there is ?i j^'^'operty rep- 
resentation from the Slave States, with voice and 
vote, while there is no such property representa- 
tion from the Free States. With glaring inequal- 
ity, the representation of Slave States is found- 
ed first on " persons," and secondly on a large 
part of their pretended property ; while the rep- 
resentation of the Free States is founded simply 
on " jjersons," leaving all their boundless mil- 
lions of property unrepresented. Thus, which- 
ever way we approach it, the absurdity of this 
pretension becomes manifest. Assuming the 
pretension of property in man under the Con- 
stitution, you slap in the face the whole theory 
of State Equality, for you disclose a gigantic in- 
equality between the Slave States and the Free 
States ; and assuming the Equality of States, in 
the House of Representatives as elsewhere, you 
slap in the face the whole pretension of property 
in man under the Constitution, 

I disdain to dwell also on that other argument, 
which, in the name of Popular Sovereignty, un- 
dertakes to secure to the people in the Territories 
the wicked power — sometimes called, by confu- 
sion of terms, right — to enslave their fellow-men ; 
as if this pretension was not blasted at once by the 
Declaration of Independence, when it announc- 
ed that " all governments derive their just powers 
from the consent of the governed," and as if 
anywhere within the jurisdiction of the Consti- 
tution, which contains no sentence, phrase or 
word, sanctioning this outrage, and which care- 
fully excludes the idea of property in man, while 
it surrounds all persons with the highest safe- 
guards of a citizen, such pretension could exist. 
Whatever it may be elsewhere, Popular Sover- 
eignty within the sphere of the Constitution hafi 



27 



its limitations. Claiming for all tlie largest 
liberty of a true Civilization, it compresses all 
within the constraints of Justice ; nor does it 
allow any man to assert a right to do what he 
pleases, except when he pleases to do right. As 
well within the Territories attempt to make a 
King as attempt to make a slave. But this pre- 
tension — rejected alike by every Slave-master 
and by every lover of Freedom — 

Where I behold a factious band agree 

To call it freedom when themselves are free, 

proceeding originally from a vain effort to avoid 
the impending question between Freedom and 
Slavery — assuming a delusive phrase of Free- 
dom as a cloak for Slavery — speaking with the 
voice of Jacob while its hands are the hands of 
Esau — and, by its plausible nick-name, enabling 
politicians sometimes to deceive the public and 
sometimes even to deceive themselves — may be 
dismissed with the other kindred pretensions for 
Slavery, while the Senator from Illinois, [Mr. 
Douglas,] who, if not its inventor, has been its 
"boldest defender, will learn that Slave-masters 
for whom he has done so much cannot afford to 
he generous ; that their gratitude is founded on 
what they expect, and not on what they have re- 
ceived ; and, that having its root in desire rather 
than in fruition, it necessarily withers and dies 
with the power to serve them. The Senator, re- 
volving these things in his mind, may confess 
the difficulty of his position, and, perhaps, 

remember Milo"s end, 

Wedged in that Timber which he strove to rend. 

And here I close this branch of the argument, 
which I have treated less fully than the first, 
partly because time and strength fail me, but 
chiefly because the Barbarism of Slavery, when 
fully established, supersedes all other inquiry. 
But enough has been done on this head. At the 
risk of repetition, I now gather it togt^ther. The 
assumption that Slave-masters, under the Consti- 
tution, may take their slaves into the Territories, 
and continue to hold them as in the States, 
stands on two pretensions — first that man may 
hold property in man. and secondly that this 
property is recognized in the Constitution. But 
we have seen that the pretended property in man 
stands on no reason, while the two special argu- 
ments by which it has been asserted, first an 
alleged inferiority of race, and secondly the an- 
cient curse of Ham, are grossly insufficient to 
uphold such a pretension. And we have next 
seen that this pretension has as little support in 
the Constitution as in reason ; that Slavery is of 
such an oflensive character, that it can find sup- 
port only. in '' positive " sanction, and words of 
"irresistible clearness ; " that this benign rule, 
questioned in the Senate, is consi.'stent with the 
principles of an advanced civilization ; that no 
such " positive " sanction, in words of " irresis- 
tible clearness," can be found in the Constitution, 
while, in harmony with the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the Address of the Continental 
Congress, the contemporaneous declarations in 
the Convention, and especially the act of the 
Convention in substituting '• service "for '■' servi- 
tude," on the ground that the latter expressed 
"the condition of slaves," all attest that the 
pretension that man can hold property in man 
was careiully, scrupulously, and completely ex- 
cluded from the Constitution, so that it has no 
semblance of support in that sacred text ; nor is 



this pretension, which is unsupported in the 
Constitution, helped by the two arguments, one 
in the name of State Equality, and the other in 
the name of Popular Sovereignty, both of which 
are properly put aside. 

Sir, the true principle, , which reversing the 
assumptions of Slave-masters, makes Freedom 
national and Slavery sectional, while every just 
claim of the Slave States is harmonized with the 
irresistible predominance of Freedom under the 
Constitution, has been declared at Chicago. Not 
questioning the right of each State, whether 
South Carolina or Turkey, Virginia or Russia, to 
order and control its own domestic institutions 
according to its own judgment exclusively, the 
Convention there assembled has explicitly 
announced Freedom to be " the normal condi- 
tion of all the Territory of the United States," 
and has explicitly denied " the authority of Con- 
gress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any 
individuals, to give legal existence to Slavery iu 
any Territory of the United States." Such is the 
triumphant response, by the aroused millions of 
the North, alike to the assumption of Slave- 
masters that the Constitution, of its own force, 
carries Slavery into the Territories, and also to 
the device of politicians, that the people of the 
Territories, in the exercise of a dishonest Popu- 
lar Sovereignty, may plant Slavery there. This 
response is complete at all ponUs, whether the 
Constitution acts upon the Territories before their 
organization or only afterward ; for, in the 
absence of a Territorial Government, there can 
be no " positive " law in words of " irresistible 
clearness " for Slavery, as there can be no such 
law, when a Territorial Government is organized, 
under the Constitution. Thus the normal condi- 
tion of the Territories is confirmed by the Con- 
stitution, which when extended over them, 
renders Slavery impossible, while it writes upon 
the soil and engraves upon the rock everywhere 
the law of impartial Freedom, without distinc- 
tion of color or race. 

Mr. President, this argument is now closed. 
Pardon me for the time I have occupied. It is 
long since I have made any such claim upon 
your attention. Pardon me, also, if I have said 
anything which I ought not to have said. I have 
spoken frankly, and from the heart ; if severely, 
yet only with the severity of a sorrowful candor, 
calling things by their right names, and letting 
historic facts tell their unimpeachable story. I 
have spoken in the patriotic hope of contribtiting 
to the welfare of my country, and also in the 
assured conviction that what I have said will find 
a response in generous souls. I believe that I 
have said nothing which is not sustained by well- 
founded argument or well-founded testimony, 
nothing which can be controverted without a 
direct assault upon reason or upon truth. 

The two assumptions of Slave-masters have 
been answered. But this is not enough. Let the 
answer become a legislative act, by the admission 
of Kansas as a Free State. Then will the Bar- 
barism of Slavery be repelled, and the pretension 
of property in man be rebuked. Such an act, 
closing this long struggle by the assurance of 
peace to the Territory, if not of tranquillity to 
the whole country, will be more grateful still as 
the herald of that better day, near at hand, when 
Freedom shall be installed everywhere under the 
National Government ; when the National Flag 



28 



wherever it floats, on sea or land within the 
national "jurisdiction, will not cover a single 
slave ; and when the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, now reviled in the name of Slavery, will 
once again be reverenced as the American iNIagna 
Charta of Human Rights. Nor is this all. Such 
an act will be the first stage in those triumphs 
by which the Republic — lifted in character so as 
to become an example to mankind — will enter at 
last upon its noble " prerogative of teaching the 
nations how to live." 

Thus, sir, speaking for Freedom in Kansas, I 
have spoken for Freedom everywhere, and for 



Civilization ; and, as the less is contained in the 
greater, so are all arts, all sciences, all economies, 
all refinements, all charities, all delights of life, 
embodied in this cause. You may reject it ; but 
it will be only for to-day. The sacred animosity 
between Freedom and Slavery can end only with 
the triumph of Freedom. This same Question 
will be soon carried before that high tribunal, 
supreme over Senate and Court, where the judges 
will be counted by millions, and where the judg- 
ment rendered will be the solemn charge of an 
aroused people, instructing a new President, in the 
name of Freedom, to see that Civilization receives 
no detriment. 



APPENDIX, 



When Mr. Sumner resumed his seat, Mr. CHESNUT, of 
South Carolina, spoke as follows : 

Mr. President, after the extraordinary though character- 
istic speech just uttered in the Senate, it is proper that I 
assign the reason for the position we are i:ow inclined to 
assume. After ranging over Europe, crawling through 
the back-doors to whine at the feet of Br tish aristocracy, 
craving pity, and reaping a rich harvest of contempt, the 
slanderer of States and men reappears i)i the Senate. We 
had hoped to be relieved from the outpouring of such vul- 
gar malice. We had hoped that one who had felt, though 
ignominiously he failed to meet, the consequences of a 
former insolence, would have become wiser, if not better, 
by experience. In this I am disappointed, and I regret it. 
Mr. President, in the her.iic ages of the world, men were 
deified for the possession and the exercise of some virtues 
— wisdom, truth, justice, magnanimity, courage. In Egypt, 
also, we know they deified beasts and reptiles; but even 
that bestial people worshipped their idols on account of 
some supposed virtue. It has been left for this day, for this 
country, for the Abolitionists of Massachusetts, lo deify the 
incarnation of malice, niendaciiy, and cowardice. Sir, we 
do not intend to be guilty of aiding in the apotheosis of 
pusillanimity and meanness. We do not intend to contri- 
bute, by any coiduct on our part, to increase the devotees 
at the shrine of this new idol. We know what is expected 
and what is desired. We are not inclined again to send 
forth the recipient of PUNISHMENT howling through 
the world, yelping fresh cries of slander and malice. These 
are the reasons, which I feel it due to myself and others to 
give the Senate and the country, why we have quietly 
listened to what has been said, and why we can take no 
other notice of the matter. 

In these words, Mr. Chesnut refers to the assault upon 
Mr. StTMNEK with a bludgeon on the floor of the Senate, by 
a Eepresentative from South Carolina, since dead, aided by 
another Eepresentative from that same State, and also a 
Eepresentative from Virginia, on account of which Mr. 
SiTMNER had been compelled to leave his seat vacant, and 
seek the restoration of his health by travel. As Mr. Ches- 



nut spoke, he was surrounded by the Slave-masters of the 
Senate, who seemed to approve what he said. There was 
no call to order by the Chair, which was occupied at the 
time by Mr. Biglek, of Pennsylvania, Mr. SUMNER 
obtained the floor with difficulty, while a motion was pend- 
ing for the postponem ent of the question, and said : 

Mr. President, before this question passes away I think I 
ought to make (though perhaps there is no occasion for it) 
a response to the Senator from South Carolina. ("'No!" 
from sev(ral Senators.] Only one word. I exposed to-day 
the Barbarism of Slavery. VV hat the Senator has said iu 
reply to me, I may well print in an Appendix to my speech 
as an additional illustration. That is all. 

Mr, HAMMOND, of South Carolina, said: 

I hope he will do it. 



The following letter, from a venerable citizen, an orna- 
ment of our legislative halls at the beginning of the century, 
and new the oldest survivor of all who have ever been 
members of Congress, is too valuable, in its testimony and 
its counsel, to be omitted in its place : 

Boston, June 5, 1860. 

Dear Sir : I have read a few abstracts from your noble 
speech, but must wait for it in a pamphlet form that I may 
read it in such type as eyes, in the eighty-ninth year of 
their age, will permit. But I have read enough to approve 
and rejoice that you have been permitted, thus truly, fully 
and faithfully, to expose the "Barbarism" of Slavery on 
that very floor, on which yon were so cruelly and brutally 
stricken down by the spirit of that Barbarism. 

I only hope that in an Appendix you will preserve the 
vera e^^?'es of that insect that attempted to sting you. Ee- 
raember that the value of amber is increased by the insect 
it preserves. Tours, very truly, 

JOSIAH QUINCT. 



THE 

EEPUBLICA:^^ platfoem. 



Resolved^ That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the 
United States, in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our con- 
stituents and our country, unite in the following declarations : 

1. That the history of the nation during the last four years has fully established the 
propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, 
and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and 
now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. 

2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and embodied in the Federal Constitution — " That all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, govern- 
ments are instituted among men, deriving .their just powers from the consent of the 
governed" — is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions; and that the 
Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and 
shall be preserved. 

3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in 
population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of 
wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad, and we hold in abhorrence all 
schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may : and we congratulate the 
country that no Republican Member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the 
threats of Disunion so often made by Democratic Members, without rebuke and with 
applause from their political associates ; and Ave denounce those threats of Disunion, in 
case of a popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles of a 
free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason which it is the imperative 
duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence. 

4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the 
right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its 
own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfec- 
tion and endurance of our political fabric depends ; and we denounce the lawless invasion 
by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as 
among the gravest of crimes. 

5. That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehen- 
sions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially 
evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon 
the protesting people of Kansas ; in construing the personal relation between master 
and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons ; in its attempted enforcement, 
everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal 
Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest ; and in its general and 
unvarying abuse of the power entrusted to it by a confiding people. 

6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades 
every department of the Federal Government ; that a return to rigid economy and 
accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by 
favored partisans ; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at 
the Federal Metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively 
demanded. 

7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into 
any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at 



variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with cotemporaneous 
exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, 
and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. 

8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of free- 
dom ; that, as our republican fathers, when they had. abolished slavery in all our national 
territory, ordained that "no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property with- 
out due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation 
is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to vio- 
late it ; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any 
individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. 

9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of 
our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity 
and a burning shame to our country and age ; and we call upon Congress to take prompt 
and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. 

10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the Legisla- 
tures of Kansas and Nebraska prohibiting slavery in those Territories, we find a practi- 
cal illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-Intervention and Popular 
Sovereignt}^ embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstration of the decep- 
tion and fraud involved therein. 

IL That Kansas should, of right, be immediately admitted as a State under the 
Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House 
of Representatives. 

12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by 
duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to 
encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country ; and we 
commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal 
wages, to agricvdture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate 
reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and 
independence. 

13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by 
actual settlers, and against any view of the Free Homestead policy which regards the 
settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty; and we demand the passage by Con- 
gress of the complete and satisfactory Homestead measure which has already passed the 
House. 

14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our Naturalization Laws 
or any State legislation by which the rights of citizenship hitherto accorded to immi- 
grants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired ; and in favor of giving a full 
and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or natural- 
ized, both at home and abroad. 

15. That appropriations by Congress for River and Harbor improvements of a national 
character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are 
authorized by the Constitution and justified by the obligation of Government to protect 
the lives and property of its citizens. 

16. That a Railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests 
of the whole country ; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and 
efficient aid in its construction ; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily Overland Mail 
should be promptly established. 

17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the 
co-operation of all citizens, however diff"ering on other questions, who substantially agree 
with us in their affirmance and support. 

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOLUTION. 

Resolved^ That we deeply sympathize with those men who have been driven, some 
from their native States and others from the States of their adoption, and are now exiled 
from their homes on account of their opinions; and we hold the Democratic party 
responsible for this gross violation of that clause of the Constitution which declares that 
the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citi- 
zens in the several States. 

Adopted at Chicago, May 17, 1860. 



LETTERS OF ACCEPTANCE 

FROM ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND HANNIBAL HAMLIN, 

IlSTDOI^SINO THE PLATFORM. 



MR. LINCOLN'S LETTER. 

Springfield, III, May 23, 1860. 
Hon. George AsJimun^ President of the Repiiblican National Convention : 

Sir: I accept the nomination tendered me by the Convention over which you presided, 
and of which I am formally apprised in the letter of yourself and others, acting as a Committee 
of the Convention, for that purpose. 

The declaration of principles and sentiments, vdrich accompanies your letter, meets my 
approval ; and it shall be my care not to violate, or disregard it, in an}^ part. 

Imploring the assistance of Divine Providence ; and with due regard to the views and feel- 
ings of all who Avere represented in the Convention ; to the rights of all the States, and Terri- 
tories, and people of the nation ; to the inviolability of the Constitution, and the perpetual 
union, harmony and prosperity of all, I am most happy to co-operate for the practical success 
of the principles declared by the Convention. 

Your obliged friend and fellow-citizen, ABRAHAM LESTCOLK 



MR. HAMLIN'S LETTER. 

Washington, May 30, 1860. 

GrENTLEMEN : Tour official communication of the 18th instant, informing me that the repre- 
sentatives of the Republican Party of the United States, assembled at Chicago on that day, had, 
b}'- a unanimous vote, selected me as their candidate for the office of Vice-President, has been 
received, together with the resolutions adopted by the Convention as its declaration of princi- 
ples. 

Those resolutions enunciate clearly and forcibly the principles which unite us and the objects 
proposed to be accomplished. They address themselves to all, and there is neither necessitj'' 
nor propriety in my entering upon a discussion of any of them. They have the, approval ol' 
my judgment, and in any action of mine will be faithfully and cordially sustained. 

I am profoundly grateful to those with whom it is my pride and pleasure politically to co- 
operate, for the nomination so unexpectedly confeixed ; and I desire to tender through you, to 
the members of the Convention, my sincere thanks for the confidence thus reposed in me. 
Should the nomination, which I now accept, be ratified by the people, and the duties devolve 
upon me of presiding over the Senate of the United States, it will be my earnest endeavor 
faithfully to discharge them with a just regard for the rights of all. 

It is to be observed, in connection with the doings of the Repubhcan Convention, that a 
paramount object with us, is, to preserve the normal condition of our territorial domain as 
homes for free men. The able advocate and defender of Republican principles whom you have 
nominated for the highest place that can gratif}'' the ambition of fnan, comes from a State which 
has been made what it is, by special action in that respect, of the wise and good men who 
founded our institutions. The rights of fi'ee labor have there been vindicated and maintained. 
The thrift and enterprise which so distinguished Illinois, one of the most flourishing States of 
the glorious West, we would see secured to all the Territories of the Union, and restore peace 
and harmony to the whole country by bringing back the Government to what it was under the 
wise and patriotic men who created it. If the Republicans shall succeed in that object, as they 
hope to, they will be held in grateful remembrance by the busy and teemmg millions of future 
ages. I am, very truly, yours, H. HAMLIN. 

Hon. G-EORGE AsHMUN, President of the Convention, and others of the Committee. 



MR. SEWARD'S ISDORSESiEP OF THE CAl^DiDATES AND PLATFORM. 

The following cordial indorsement of the Candidates and Platform of the Repubhcan Party 

appeared in the Auburn Daily Advertiser on the day after the nomination, written by Senator 

Seward : 

" We place the names of Lincoln and Hamlin at the head of our columns, with pride and 
satisfaction. No truer exposition of the Republican creed could be given, than the platform 
adopted by the Convention contains. No truer or firmer defenders of the Republican faith 
could have been found in the Union, than the distinguished and esteemed citizens on whom 
the honors of the nomination have fallen. Their election, we trust, by a decisive majority, will 
restore the Government of the United States to its constitutional and ancient course. Let the 
watchword of the Republican Party, then, be Union and Liberty, and onward to Victory." 



EVENING JOTJBNAL TRACTS, NO. U. 



'feteg at Uar toitlj f|f ^oral Sratanl of t|c Morllr, 



A SPEECH 



GAEL SCHUEZ, 



OF A^^isooNSiisr 



Delivered in St. Louis, Aug. 1, 1860. 



Mr. President and Gentlemen : To deny the 
existence of an evil they do not mean to remedy, 
to ascribe to paltry causes the origin of great 
problems they do not mean to solve, to charge 
those who define the nature of an existing diffi- 
culty with having originated it — these are expe- 
dients which the opponents of reformatory move- 
ments have resorted to since mankind has a his- 
tory. An appeal to ignorance or timidity is their 
last hope, when all resources of logic and argu- 
ment are exhausted. The old comedy is repeated 
again and again. 

The assertions that the great contest between 
Free and Slave Labor has no foundation in fact, 
that the origin of the Slavery controversy is to 
be found in the fanaticism of a few Northern 
Abolitionists, and that those who speak of an 
"irrepressible conflict" are to be made respon- 
sible for its existence — these form the argunien- 
tative staple of those who possess either not sa- 
gacity enough to discern, or not courage enough 
to state facts as they are. 

In investigating the causes of the great strug- 
gle which has for years kept the minds of the 
people in constant uneasiness and excitement, I 
shall endeavor to act with the most perfect fair- 
ness. I shall not indulge in any denunciations. 
I shall impeach the motives of no one. I sliall 
not appeal to prejudice or passion. I invite you 
to pass in review the actual state of things with 
calmness and impartiality. 

It is one of the best traits of human nature, 
that we form our first opinions on matters of gen- 
eral interest from our innate sense of right and 
wrong. Our moral impressions, the dictates of 
our consciences, the generous impulses of our 
hearts, are the sources from which our first con- 



victions spring. But custom, material interest, 
and our natural inclinations to acquiesce in that 
which is, whether right or wrong, that vis iner- 
tice which has brought so much suffering upon 
humanity, are apt to overrule the native instincts 
of our moral nature. They are sicklied over by 
the pale cast of calculation ; the freshness of 
their impelling powers is lost, and questions es- 
sentially moral are imperceptibly changed into 
questions of material interest, national economy, 
or political power. 

The people of the South have evidently gone 
through that process in regard to the institution 
of Slavery ; they have become accustomed to 
identify its existence with the existence of 
southern society, while even a large majority 
of the people of the North were rather inclined 
to silence their moral objections to it, and to 
acquiesce, until its immediate interference with 
matters of general interest gave a new impulse 
to their native antipathy. Although I am not 
ashamed to confess, that the moral merits of the 
question would alone have been more than suffi- 
cient to make me an Anti-Slavery man, yet I will 
confine myself to a discussion of its practical 
effects, in order to make myself intelligible even 
to those who do not sympathize with me. This 
is the first time that I have had the honor to 
address a meeting in a slave state, and even now 
I owe the privilege of expressing my opinions 
freely and without restraint to the circumstance 
that, although in a slave state, I stand upon the 
soil of a free city, and under the generous pro- 
tection of free men. [Applause.] Must I call "a 
privilege" what ought to be universally respect- 
ed as the sacred birthright of every American 
citizen '? Ask any slaveholder who may be pre- 



FoR Sale at the Office of the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Single Copy, 2o. ; 
PEE Dozen Copies, 20c.; per Hundred, $1; per Thousand, $8. 



sent in this vast assembly whether he does not 
deem it Avrong and unjustifiable that I, an Anti- 
Slaveiy man, should be permitted to give a pub- 
lic expression of my views in a slave state 1 
wliether he would not be in favor of silencing 
me by whatever nieans within his reach 1 whether 
I would not be silenced at once in a strong slave- 
holding community'? I do not mean to blame 
him for it. Let us give him a fair hearing. The 
slaveholder will state his political views substan- 
tially as follows : 

"On a point of astronomy, or chemistry, or 
medicine, you may enteitain and express what- 
ever opinion you please ; but we cannot permit 
you to discuss the relation between master and 
servant, as it exists here in the slave states, for 
in doing so you would endanger our safety and 
undermine our social system. Our condition is 
such tliat the slightest movement of insubordi- 
nation once started, is apt to grow with uncon- 
trollable rapidity ; we have, therefore, to guard 
against everything that may start it; we cannot 
allow^ free discussion of the subject ; we have to 
remove from our midst every incendiary element ; 
we cannot be expected to tolerate opinions or per- 
sons among us that are opposed to the ruling 
Older of thir)gs. Whenever a mischievous at- 
tempt is made, we are obliged to repress it with 
such energy and severity as to strike teiror into 
the hearts of those who might be capable of re- 
peating the attempt. Our condition requi)-es 
the prcmiptest action, and if, in cases of immi- 
nent danger, the regular process of the courts 
is too slow or uncertain, we are obliged to, 
resort to lynch law in order to supply its defi- 
ciencies. 

" Moreover, we must adopt our rules and cus- 
toms of government to the peculiar wants of 
our social organization. In order to be safe, we 
must intrust the government in its general ad- 
ministration, as well as its details, to those who, 
by their own interests, are bound to be the natu- 
ral guardians of the system. Hence our safely 
requires that the political power in our states 
should be put into the hands of slaveholders; 
and where we have no law to that effect, custom 
upliolds the rule. 

" In order to put the political ascendancy of 
those who are most interested in the preservation 
of Slavery upon a solid basis, we must put down 
atiythiiig that would produce and foster inde- 
pendent aspirations among tlie other classes of 
society. It would not only be insane to educate 
the slaves, but highly dangerous to extend to the 
great mass of poor white non-slaveholders the 
means of education; for in doing so we might 
raise an element to influence and power, whose 
interests are not identical wiih those of the slave- 
holder. This is our policy of self-preservation, 
and we are bound to enforce it." 

Sir, I mean to be just to the slaveholders ; and, 
strange as it may sound, as to the propriety of 
their policy I agree with them. Having identi- 
fied their social existence with the existence of 
Slavery, they cannot act othei'wise. 

It is necessity that urges them on. It is true 
that Slavery is an inflammable element. A stray 
spark of thought or hope may cause a terrible 
conflagration. The torch of free si)eech and 
press, which gives light to the house of Liberty, 
is very apt to set on fire ihe house of Slavery. 
What is more natural than that the torch should 



be extinguished where there is such an abun- 
dance of explosive materian 

It is true that in a slaveholding community the 
strictest subordination must be enforced, that the 
maintenance of established order requires the 
most rigorous preventive and repressive mea- 
sures, which will not always allow of a strict 
observance of the rules of legal process ; it is 
equally true that the making and the execution 
of the laws can be safely intrusted only to those 
who, by their position, are bound to the ruling 
interest ; true, that popular education is danger- 
ous to the exclusive rule of an exclusive class; 
true, that men must be kept stupid in order to 
be ke{)t obedient. What is moie consistent, 
theieforc, than that fundamental liberties should 
be disregarded whenever they become dangerous; 
that the safeguards of human rights in the ad- 
ministration of justice, should be set aside when- 
ever the emergency calls for prompt and ener- 
getic action ; that the masses should be left 
uneducated, in order to give the slaveholding 
Oligarchy an imdisputed sway? In one word, 
that tlie rights, the liberties and the security of 
the individual should have to yield to the para- 
mount consideration of the safety of the ruling 
interest'? All this is true; and accepting the 
piemises, all these necessities exist. You seem 
startled at this proposition, and ask, What is the 
institution that demands for its protection such 
measures ? The Slave States are by no means 
original in this respect. Look at the kingdom of 
Naples, where the ruling power is governed by 
similar exclusive interests, and acts on the same 
instinct of self-preservation ; does it not resort to 
the same means'? You tell me that the princi-- 
pies underlying our system of govermnent are 
very different from those of the kingdom of 
Naples, and that the means of protection I spoke 
of run contrary to the spirit of Qur institutions. 
Indeed, so it seems to be. What does that prove ? 
Simply this: That a social institution which is 
in antagonism with the principles of democratic 
government, camiot be maintained and protected 
by means which are in accordance witli those 
principles; and on th;; other hand, that a social 
institution which cannot be protected by means 
which are in accordance with the democratic 
principles of our government, must essentially be 
in antagonism to those principles. It proves that 
the people in the slaveholding States, althoush 
pietetiding to be freemen, are, by the necessities 
arising from their condition, the slaves of Sla- 
very. That is all. 

But I am told that the Slave States are sove- 
reign, and may shape and govern their home 
concerns according to their own notions, subiect 
only to the Constitution of the United States, 
Granted. But the necessities of Slavery do not 
stop there. The Slave States are members of a 
federal family, and as the King of Naples in his 
foreign policy is governed by his peculiar inte- 
rests^ so is the policy of the Slave States in our 
federal affairs governed by their peculiar neces- 
sities. 

I hear much said of the aggressive spirit of the 
Slave Power, but I am almost inclined to acquit 
it of that charge, for all its apparently aggressive 
attempts are no less dictated by instinct of self- 
preseivation, than the most striking features of 
its home policy. 

Let us listen to the slaveholder again. He 



says: "What will become of the security of our 
slave property, if inside of this Union a slave may 
finally escape from the liaiids of his master, by 
simply crossing the line of his State '? But the 
fanatical Anti-Slavery spirit prevailing in the 
Free Slates, will avail itself of every facility the 
comnjon lesal process affords, as the trial by juiy 
and the writ of habeas corpus, to aid the fueitive 
In his escajjc. We are, therefore, obliged to 
demand such legislation at the hands of our 
General Government as will remove these obsta- 
cles thrown in the way of the recapture of our 
pr<^pert3', and oblige the citizens, by law, to assist 
UH in the re-appiehension of the fugitive, so ihe 
trial by jury and the wiit of habeas co7'pus will 
liave to yield, and the good old common law 
princi{)]e, that in all cases concerning life and 
liberty, ll e pi'esumpti<in be in favor of liberty, 
goes by the board." Tliis may seem rather hard, 
but is it not eminently consistent ? 

The necessities of Slavery do not stop there. 
Let us hear how the slaveholder proceeds : " In 
order to obtain such legislation from our national 
councils, it is necessary that the prejudices 
against Slavery existing in the Free States be 
disarmed. It is impossible that the slave inte- 
rest should deem itself secui'e as long as a vio- 
lent agitation is kept up against it, which contin- 
ually troubles us at home, and exercises upon 
the National Legislature an influence hostile to 
Slavery. We are, therefore, obliged to demand 
that measm-es be taken to stop that agitation." 
Hothin«5 more natural than that. The right of 
petition, held sacred even by some despotic gov-^ 
crnments, must be curtailed. Post- Office regu- 
lations have to pievent the dissemination of 
Anti Slavery sentiments by the newspapers. Even 
in the Free States willing insti-uments are found, 
■who urge the adopticm of measures tending to 
Suppress the very discussion of this question. 
Laws are advocated in Congress (and that "cham- 
pion of free labor," Douglas, takes the lead), 
rnaking it a criminal offense to organize associa- 
tions hostile to Slavery, and empowering the 
General Government to suppress them by means 
of a centralized police. [Loud cheers.] This 
may seem somewhat tyrannical, but is it not emi- 
nently consisienf? [Aj)plau8e.] 

But in order to succeed in this. Slavery needs 
a controlling power in the General Government. 
It cannot expect to persuade us, so it must try to 
subdue and rule us. Hear the slaveholder : "It 
is impossible that we should consider our inter- 
ests safe in this Union, unless the political equi- 
librium between the Free and Slave States be re- 
stored. If the Free States are peimitted to in- 
crease and the Slave States stand still, we shall 
'be completely at the mercy of a hostile majority. 
We are therefore obliged to demand accessions 
of territoiy out of which new Slave States can 
be formed, so as to increase our representation 
in Congress, and to restore the equilibrium of 
power." Nothing more sensible. The acquisi- 
tion of foreign countries, such as Cuba and the 
Northern States of Mexico, is demanded, and, if 
they cannot be* obtained by fair purchase and di- 
plomatic transaction, war must be resorted to: 
and, if the majority of the people are not in- 
clined to go to war, our international relations 
must be disturbed by fillibustering expeditions, 
precii)itating, if possible, this country into wars, 
thus forcing the peaceable or cheating the enthu- 



siastic into subserviency to the plans of the Slave 
Power You may call this jjiracy, disgracing us 
in the eyes of the civilized world. But can you 
deny that Slaveiy needs power, and that it can- 
not obtain that power except by extension 1 

So, pressed by its necessities, it lays its hand 
upon our national teriitories. Time-honored com- 
pacts, hemming in Slaveiy, must be abrogated. 
The Constitution must be so construed as to eive 
Slavery unlimited swaj' over our national domain. 
Hence your Nebraska hills and Dred Scott deci- 
sions, and Slave Code platforms. You may call 
that atrociou.'^, but can you deny its consistency ? 

" But," adds the slaveholder, *' of what use is 
to us the abstract right to go with our slave ])io- 
perty into the Territories, if you pass laws which 
attract to the Territories a class of population 
that will crowd « ut Slavery; if you attract to 
them the foreign immigrant by granting him the 
immediate enjoyment of political rights; if you 
allure the pauper from all parts of the globe by 
your preemption laws and homestead bills 1 We 
want the negro in the Territories. You give us 
the foreign immigraTit. Slavery cannot exist ex- 
cept with the system of laige farms, and your 
homestead bills establish tlie system of small 
farms, with which free labor is inseparably con- 
nected. We aie, therefore, obliged to demand 
that all such mischievous projects be abandoned." 
Nothing more [)lausible. Hence the right of the 
laboring man to acquire property in the soil by 
his labor is denied ; your homestead bills voted 
down, and the blight of oppressive speculation 
fastened upon your virgin soil, and attemj)ts arc 
made to deprive the foreign immigrant in the 
Territories of the immediate enjoyment of politi- 
cal lights, which, in the primitive state of social 
organization, are essential to Ijis existence. All 
this in order to give Slavery a chance to obtain 
pos.session of our national domain. This may 
seem rather hard. But can you deny that Sla- 
very for its own protection needs power in the 
general government % That it cannot obtain that 
powei- except by increased representation 1 That 
it cannot increase its representation except by 
conquest and extension over the Teriitories 1 and 
that with this policy all measures are incomi)ati- 
ble which bid fair to play the Territories into the 
hands of free labor? 

This is not all. Listen to the slaveholder once 
more : " Our states," he tells us, " are essentially 
agricultural producing states. We have but lit-" 
tie commerce, and still less manufacturing in- 
dustry. All legislation tending to benefit the 
connnercial and manufacturing interests ))rinci- 
pally, is therefore to our immediate i)rejudice. 
It will oblige us to contribute to the growth and 
prosperity of the free states at our ex})en.>-e, and 
consequently turn the balance of political powei 
still more against us. We are, therefore, ol)liged 
to demand that all attempts to promote, by federal 
legislation, the industrial interest, be given up." 
Nothing more logical. The system of slave 
labor has never permitted them to recognize 
and develop the harmony of agricultmal and 
industrial and commercial pursuits. What is 
more natural, than that they should seek to give 
the peculiar economical inteiest in which their 
superiority consists, the prepmiderance in our 
economical policy"? Hence their unrelenting 
opposition to all legislation tending to develop 
the peculiar resources of the free states. 



Here let us pause. Is there anything strange 
or surprising in all this 7 You may call it mad- 
ness, but there is method in this madness. The 
slave power is impelled by the irrepressible pow- 
er of necessity. It cannot exist unless it rules, 
and it cannot rule unless it keeps down its oppo- 
nents. All its demands and arts are in strict 
harmony with its interests and attributes ; they 
are the natural growth of its existence. I repeat, 
I am willing to acquit it of the charge of willful 
aggression ; I am willing to concede that it strug- 
gles for self-preservation ; but now the momen- 
tous question arises, how do the means which 
seem to be indispensable for the self-preservation 
of Slavery agree with the existence and interests 
of free-labor society 1 

Sir, if Mr. Hammond of South Carolina, or 
Mr. Brown of Mississippi, had listened to me, 
would tliey not be obliged to give me credit for 
having stated their case fairly 1 No^y listen to 
me, while I state our own. 

Cast your eyes over that great bee-hive, called 
the free states. See by the railroad and the tele- 
graphic wire every village, almost every back- 
wood cottage, drawn withm the immediate reach 
of progressive civilization. Look over our grain 
fields, but latel}" a lonesome wilderness, where 
machinery is almost superseding the labor of the 
human hand ; over our workshops, Avhose aspect 
is almost daily changed by the magic touch of 
inventive genius; over our fleets of merchant 
vessels, numerous enough to make the whole 
world tributary to our prosperity ; look upon 
our society, where by popular education and the 
continual change of condition, the dividing lines 
between ranks and classes are almost obliterated; 
look upon our system of public instruction, 
Avhich i)laces even the lowliest child of the peo- 
ple upon the high road of progressive advance- 
ment ; upon our rapid growth and expansive 
prosperiiy, which is indeed subject to reverses 
and checks, but contains such a wonderful ferti- 
lity of resources, that every check is a mere incen- 
tive for new enterprise, every reverse but a mere 
opportunity for the development of new powers. 

To what do we owe all this '? First and foremost 
to that perfect freedom of inquiry which acknow- 
ledges no rules but those of logic, no limits but 
those that bound the faculties of the human 
mind. [Cheers.] Its magic consists in its uni- 
versality. To it we owe the harmony of our pro- 
gressive movement in all its endless ramifications. 
No single science, no single practical pursuit ex- 
ists in our day indepeiidently of all other scien- 
ces, all other practical pursuits. This is the age 
of the solidarity of progress. Set a limit to the 
freedom of inquiry in one direction and you de- 
stroy the harmony of its propelling action. Give 
us the Roman inquisition, which forbids Galileo 
Galites to think that the earth moves round the 
sun, and he has to interrupt and give up the 
splendid train of his discoveries, and their infiu- 
ence upon all other branches of science is lost ; 
he has to give it up, or he must fight the inquisi- 
tion. [Cheers.] Let the slave power or any other 
political or economical interest tell us that we 
must think, and say, and invent, and discover 
nothing which is against its demands — and we 
must interrupt and give up the harmony of our 
progressive development, or fight the tyrannical 
pretension, whatever shade it may assume. [Loud 
cheers,] 



Believing, as we do, that the moral and ideal 
development of man is the true aim and end of 
human society, we must preserve in their effi- 
ciency the means which serve that end. In order 
to secure to the freedom of inquiry its full pro- 
ductive power, we must surround it with all the 
safeguards which political institutions afford. As 
we cannot set a limit to the activity of our minds, 
so we cannot muzzle our mouths or fetter the 
press with a censorship. [Applause.] We cannot 
arrest or restrain the discussion of the question, 
what system of labor, or what organization of 
society promotes best the moral and intellectual 
development of man. [Loud applause.] We can- 
not deprive a single individual of the privileges 
which protect him in the free exercise of his fa- 
culties, and the enjoyment of his right, so long as 
these faculties are not employed to the detriment 
of the rights and liberties of others. Our organi- 
zation of society resting upon equal rights, we 
find our security in a general system of popular 
education which fits all for an intelligent exercise 
of those rights. This is the home policy of free 
labor society. This policy in our federal affairs 
must necessarily correspond. Deeming free and 
intelligent labor the only safe basis of society, it 
is our duty to expand its blessings over all the 
territory within our reach ; seeing our own pros- 
perity advanced by the prosperity of our neigh- 
bors, we must endeavor to plant upon our bor- 
ders a system of labor which answers in that re- 
spect. Do we recognize the right of the labor- 
ing man to the soil he cultivates and shield him 
^against oppressive speculation 1 Seeing in the 
"harmonious development of all branches of labor 
a source of progress and power, we must adopt a 
policy which draws to light the resources of the 
land, gives work to our workshops and security 
to our commerce. These are the principles and 
views governing our policy. 

Slaveholders, look at this picture, and at this. 
Can the difference escape your observation 7 You 
may say, as many have said, that there is indeed 
a difference of principles, but not necessarily an 
antagonism of interests. Look again. 

Your social system is founded upon forced la- 
bor, ours upon free labor. Slave labor cannot 
exist together with freedom of inquiry, and so 
you demand the restriction of that freedom ; free 
labor cannot exist without it, and so we main- 
tain its inviolability. Slave labor demands the 
setting aside of the safeguards of individual 
liberty, for the purpose of upholding subordina- 
tion and protecting slave property ; free labor 
demands their preservation as essential and in- 
dispensable to its existence and progressive de- 
velopment. Slavery demands extension by an 
aggressive foreign policy; free labor demands' 
an honorable peace and friendly intercourse with 
the world abroad for its commerce, and a peace- 
able and undisturbed development of our re- 
sources at home for its agriculture and industry. 
Slavery demands extension over national terri- 
tories for the purpose of gaining political power ; 
free labor demands the national domain for 
working men for the purpose of spreading the 
blessings of liberty and civilization. Slavery 
therefore opposes all measures tending to secure 
the soil to the actual laborer ; free labor there- 
fore recognizes the right of the settler to the 
soil, and demands measures protecting hira 
against the pressure of speculation. Slavery de- 



mands the absolute ascendency of the planting 
interest in our economical policy ; free labor de- 
mands legislation tending to develop all the 
resources of the land, and to harmonize the agri- 
cultural, commercial and industrial interests. 
Slavery demands the control of the General Gov- 
ernment for its special protection and the pro- 
motion of its peculiar interests ; free labor de- 
mands that the General Government be adminis- 
tered for the purpose of securing to all the bless- 
ings of liberty, and for the promotion of the 
general welfare. [Tremendous applause ] Sla- 
very demands the recognition of its divine right ; 
free labor recognizes no divine right but that 
of the liberty of all men. [Loud cheers.] 

With one word, Slavery de^mands fc/)' iUp7'otec- 
tion and perpetuation a system of polity ivliich is 
utterly incompatible with the principles upon 
which the organization of Free Labor society 
rests. There is the antagonism. That is the 
essence of the "irrepressible conflict." It is a 
conflict of principles underlying interests, al- 
ways the same, whether appearing as a moral, 
economical, or political question. Mr. Douglas 
boasted that he could repress it with police mea- 
sures ; he might as well try to fetter the winds 
with a rope. The South mean to repress it with 
decisions of the Supreme Court ; they might as 
well, like Xerxes, try to subdue the waves of the 
ocean by throwing chains into the water. [Ap- 
plause.] 

The conflict of constitutional constructions is 
indeed but a mere incident of the great struggle 
— a mere symptom of the crisis. Long before 
the Slavery question in the form of an abstract 
constitutional controversy agitated the public 
mind, the conflict of interests raged in our na- 
tional councils. What mattered it that the 
struggle about the encouragement of home in- 
dustry and internal improvements was not osten- 
sibly carried on under the firm of pro and anti 
slavery % What mattered it that your new- 
fangled constitutional doctrines were not yet in- 
vented, when Slavery tried to expand by the 
annexation of foreign countries ? that no Dred 
Scott decision was yet cooked up, when the right 
of petition was curtailed, when attempts were 
made to arrest the discussion of the Slavery 
question ail over the Union, and when the trial 
by jury and the writ of habeas corpus was over- 
ridden by the Fugitive Slave Law 7 And even 
lately, when the Slave Power with one gigantic 
grasp attempted to seize the whole of our na- 
tional domain, what else was and is your new 
constitutional doctrine but an ill-disguised at- 
tempt to clothe a long-cherished design with the 
color of law '? 

Read your history with an impartial eye, and 
you will find that the construction of the Con- 
stitution always shaped itself according to the 
prevailing moral impulses or the predominance 
of material over political interests. The logic of 
our minds is but too apt to follow in the track of 
our sympathies and aspirations. It was when 
the South had control of our government, that 
acts were passed for the raising of duties on 
imports, for the creation of a national bank, and 
in aid of the American shipping interest. It was 
under the lead of the South, that the systems of 
internal impi'ovement and of the protection of 
home industry were inaugurated ; it was the 
South no less than the North, that insisted upon 



and exercised the power of Congress to exclude 
Slavery from the Territories. So long as these 
measures seemed to agree with the predominant 
interest, there seemed to be no question about 
their constitutionality. Even Mr. Calhoun him- 
self said in one of his most celebrated speeches, 
delivered in the session of 1815-16, " That it was 
the duty of the Government, as a means of de- 
fense, to encourage the domestic industry of the 
country." But as soon as it was found out that 
this policy redounded more to the benefit of fiee 
labor, than that of the unenterprising South, then 
the same men who had inaugurated it, worked 
its overthrow on the plea that it was at war with 
the principles of the Constitution. [Murmurs of 
applause.] The constitutionality of the Ordi- 
nance of 1787, was never questioned as long as 
the prevailing sentiment of the South ran against 
the perpetuation of Slavery. The Missouri Com- 
promise was held as sacred and inviolable as the 
Constitution itself, so long as it served to intro- 
duce Slave States into this Union ; but no sooner 
were, by virtue of its provisions, Free Territories 
to be organized, than its unconstitutionality was 
at once discovered. 

The predominance of interests determines the 
construction of the Constitution. So it was and 
so it ever will be. Only those who remained true 
to the original programme of the fathers, re- 
mained true to the original construction. Decide 
the contest of principles underlying interests, 
and the conflict of constitutional constructions 
will settle itself. This way seems a dangerous 
political theory. It is not an article of my creed 
— not a matter of principle — but a matter of ex- 
perience ; not a doctrine, but a fact. 

Thus the all-pervading antagonism stands 
before us, gigantic in its dimensions, growing 
every day in the awful proportions of its prob- 
lems, involving the character of our institutions ; 
involving our relations with the world abroad ; 
involving our peace, our rights and liberties at 
home ; involving our growth and prosperity ; 
involving our moral and political existence as a 
nation. 

How short-sighted, how childish are those who 
find its origin in artificial agitation % As though 
we could produce a tempest by blowing our noses, 
or an earthquake by stamping our puny feet 
upon the ground. [Laughter.] But how to 
solve, how to decide it 1 Let us pass in review 
our political parties, and the remedies they pro- 
pose- There we encounter the so-called Union 
party, with Bell and Everett who tell us the best 
way to settle the conflict is to ignore it. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

Ignore it ! Ignore it, when attempts are made 
to plunge the country into war and disgrace for 
the purpose of Slavery extension ! Ignore it, 
when Slavery and free labor wage their fierce 
war about the possession of the national domain ! 
Ignore it, when the liberties of speech and press 
are attacked ! Ignore it, when the actual settler 
claims the virgin soil, and the slaveholding capi- 
talists claim it also ! Ignore it, when the plant- 
ing interest seeks to establish and maintain its 
exclusive supremacy in our economical policy ! 
Ignore it, indeed ! Ignore the fire that consumes 
the corner-posts of your house! Ignore the 
storm that breaks the rudder and tears to tatters 
the sails of your ship! Conjure the revolted 
elements with a meek Mount Vernon lecture t' 



Pour upon the furious waves the placid oil of a 
quotation from WashingLon's faiewell address ! 
[Clieeis and laughter.] 

If- is true the}' tell us they will enforce the laws 
and the Constitution well enough ! But what 
laws ? Tiiose that free labor deiuand, or those j 
that Slavery gives us? What Constitution? 
That of Washington and Madi.son, or that of 
Slidell, Douglas and Taney 1 [Loud and long 
continued cheering.] 

The conflict stands there with the stubborn, 
brutal force of reality. However severely it 
may disturb the nerves of timid gentlemen, 
there it stands and speaks the hard, stern lan- 
guage of fact. I understand well that great 
problems and responsibilities should be ap- 
proached with caie and caution. But times like 
these demand the firm actions of men win) know 
what they will, and will it, not that eunuch 
policy, which, conscious of its own unproduc- 
tiveness, invites us blandly to settle down into 
the imbecile contentment of general impotency. 
They cannot ignore the conflict if they would, 
but have not nerve enough to decide it if they 
could. 

The next party that claims our attention is the 
so-called Democracy. , As it is mj object to dis- 
cuss the practical, not the constitutional merits 
of the problem before us, I misht pass over the j 
divisions existing in that organizaiion. In fact, ! 
the point which separates Mr. Douglas from Mr. } 
Breckinridge is but a mere quibble, a mere mat- ; 
ter of etiquette. Mr. Douglas is unwilling to • 
admit in words what he has a hundred times ad- 
mitted in fact, for, can yon tell me, what practi- 
cal difference in the world there is between dii-ect 
and indiiect intervention by Congress in favor of 
Slavery, and that kind of non-intervention by 
Congiess which merely consists in making room 
for direct intervention by the Sui)reme Conrf? 
And besides, in nearly all practical measures of 
policy Mr. Douglas is regularly to be found on 
the side of the exti-eme South. Like that great 
statesman of yours (I beg your pardon, gentle- 
men, for alluding to him in decent political com- 
pany), he always votes agamst measures for the 
encouragement of home industry, i)erhaps be- 
cause he does not understand them. [Laughter.] 
He is one of the firmest supporters of the ascen- 
dency of the ])lanters' interest in our economical 
questions; and as to the extension of Slavery 
by conquest and annexation, the wildest filli bus- 
ters may always count upon his tenderest sjTn- 
pathies. 

So I say I might have ignored him, if he had not 
succeeded in creating the most deafening of noises 
with the hollowest of drums. [Loud cheers.] 

He proposes to "repress the irrepressible con- 
flict " with what he emphatically styles *' his 
great principle." At first he defined it as " self- 
government of the people in the territories;" 
but it became soon apparent that under his great 
principle tlie ])eople of the territories were gov- 
erned by anybody but self, and he called it 
"pot>ular sovereignty." It soon turned out that 
this kind of sovereignty Avas not very popular, 
after all, and he called it "non-inteivention." 
;[Laughter.] Methinks something will intervene, 
pretty soon, and he will strain his imagination 
ifor another name, if it be worth while at all to 
christen a thing which never had any tangible 
•existence. 



But if we may believe him, his " great princi- 
ple," and nothing but his " great principle," will 
settle the irrepressible conflict, restore peace and 
harmony to the nation, and save the Union — and, 
in fact, Mr. Douglas is about the only one among 
the Presidential candidates who insists that there 
is an immediate necessity of saving that ancient 
institution. 

Let us jndge the merits of his great principle 
by its results : Has it secured to the inhabitants 
of the territories the right of self-government '? 
Never were the peojde of a ten itory subject to a 
despotism more aibitvary, and to a violence more 
lawless and atrocious, than were the people of 
Kansas, after the enactment of the Nebraska bill. 
Has it removed the slavery question from the 
halls of Congress 1 The fight has never raged 
with greater fieiceness, and Congress came hardly 
ever so near debating with bowie knives and re- 
volvers, as about the questions raised by the Ne- 
biaska bill. Has it established safe atid uniform 
rules for the constiuction of the constitution 1 It 
has set aside the construction put upon the con- 
stitution by those who framed it; and for the 
rest, let Mr. Douglas give you his opinion on the 
Died Scott decision. Has it given peace and 
harmony to the country by repiessing the irre- 
pressible conflict 1 Alas! i)0or great principle! 
this harangue of peace and haimony inflamed the 
irrepressil)le conflict, even inside of the Demo- 
cratic party, and rent into two sections an organ- 
ization rthich claimed the exclusive privilege of 
nationality. 

These were its immediate results. It is true, 
Mr. Douslas accuses his adversaries of having 
created the disturbance. Certainly; if the whole 
American nation had bowed their heads in silent 
obedience before Mr. Douglas' mandates, there 
would have been no strife. Mr. Slidell, Mr. Bu- 
chanan, and Mr. Breckinridge, may say the same ; 
so may the emperor of Austria and the king of 
Naples. Such men are apt to be disturbed by 
op()onents, and Mr. Douglas need not be sur- 
prised if he has a few ! The true s<mrce of the 
difficulty was this : The Kansas-Nebraska bill was 
thrown as an ambiguous, illogical measure, be- 
tween two antagonistic interests, each o} which 
construed it for its own advantage. It brought 
the contesting forces together, face to face, 
without offering a clear ground upon which to 
settle the conflict. Thus it quickened and inten- 
sified the struggle, instead of allaying it. Hence 
its total failure as a harmonizing measure. 

What, then, is its positive result 1 As to its 
practical importance in the conflict between Free 
and Slave Labor, Mr. Douglas himself enlightens 
us. as follows : 

"Has the South been excluded from all the territory 
acquired from Mexico ? What says the bill from the 
House of Representatives now on your table, repealing 
the slave code in New Mexico established by the people 
themselves ? It Is part of the history of the country 
that under this doctrine of non-intervention, 'this doc- 
trine that you delight to call Squatter Sovereignty, the 
people of New Mexico have introduced and protected 
Slavery in the whole of that Territory. Under this 
doctrine, they have converted a tract of Free territory 
into Slave territory, more than five times the size of 
the State of New York. Under this doctrine. Slavery 
has been extended from the Rio Grande to the Gulf of 
California, and from the line of the Republic of Mexico, 
not only up to 36^ 30', but up to 38^'— giving you a de- 
gree and a half more Slave Territory than you ever 
claimed. In 1848 and 1849 and 1850, you only asked to 
have the line of 36= 30'. The Nashville Convention 
fixed that as its ultimatum. I offered it in the Senate 
in August, 184S, and it was adopted here but rejected 



in the House of Rei)resentatives. You asked only up 
to 36° 30', and non-intervention has given you Slave 
Territory up to 38°, a degree and a halt more than you 
asked, and yet you say this is a sacrifice of Southern 
rights. 

"These are the fruits of this principle which the 
Senator from Mississippi regards as hostile to the 
rights of the South. W here did you ever get any other 
fruits that were more palatable to your taste, or more 
refreshing to your strength ? What other inch of Free 
Territory has been converted into Slave Territory on 
the American Continent, since the Revolution, except 
in New Mexico and Arizona, under the principle ot 
non-interventios affirmed at Charleston ? If it is true 
that this principle of non-intervention has conferred 
upon you all that immense territory; has protected 
Slavery in that comparatively northern and cold region 
where you did not expect it to go, cannot you trust the 
same principle further South, when you come to ac- 
quire additional territory from Mexico. If it be true 
that this principle of Lion-intervention has given to 
Slavery all New Mexico, which was surrounded on 
nearly every side by Free Territory, will not the same 
principle protect you in the Northern States of Mexico 
when they are acquired, since they are now surrounded 
by Slave Teri-itory!" 

Indeed 1 . This, then, is the practical solution 
of the difficult}' which Mr. Douglas proposes. 
The " great principle of non-intervention," which, 
according to his own testimony, strengthens 
Slavery, by increasing tlie number of Slave 
States, and their representation and power in our 
Gencal Government ; to which is to be added 
the annexation of Cuba and the Noithern States 
of Mexico, out of which an additional number of 
Slave States is to be carved. But his Northern 
friends say that he is the champion of Free labor 
— and they aie honorable men. 

Oh, what a deep-seated, overweening confidence 
Mr. Douglas, when he made this statement, must 
have had in the unfathomable, desperate, incor- 
rigible stupidity of those Northern Democrats 
who support him for the purpose of baffling and 
punishing the fire-eaters of the South. Good 
innocent souls, do they not see that by support- 
ing Mr. Douglas's poUcy, which throws into the 
lap of Slavery, Territory afier Territory, they 
Avill strengthen and render more overbeai'ing the 
very same Slave Power they mean to baffle and 
punish? Do they not see that they are prepar- 
ing a lash for their own backs 1 It is true, when 
they feel it, and they deserve to feel it, they may 
console themselves with the idea that it is a whip 
of their own raanufactui e ! 

At last we arrive at the programme of the 
Slave Power in its open and undisguised forms, 
of which Mr. Breckinridge is the representative 
and Mr. Douglas the servant, although he does 
mot wear its livery, except on occasions of state. 

This programme is as follows : The agitation 
of the Slaver}^ question N(Mth and South is to 
be arrested; the Fugitive Slave law, in its pre- 
sent form, is to be strictly canicd out. and all 
State legislation impeding its execution to be re- 
pealed ; the Constitutional ricrht of Slavery to 
occupy the Territories of the United States, and 
to be pi-otected there is to be acknowledged ; all 
measures tending fo im[)ede the ingress of 
Slavery, and its establishment in the Territories, 
are to be abandoned ; the opposition to the con- 
quest and annexation of foreign countries out of 
which more slave states can be formed, is to be 
given up; the economical policy of the planting 
interest to the exclusion of the encouragement 
of home industry, is to become the ruling policy 
of the countr}'. 

This is the Southern solution of the irrepressi- 
ble conflict. 



This programme possesses at least the merit 
of logic. The logic of Slavery and Despotism 
against the logic of Free Labor and Liberty. 
The issue is plainly made up. Free labor is 
summoned to submit to the measures which 
Slavery deems necessary for its perpetuation. 
We are called upon to adapt our laws and sys- 
tems of policy, and the whole development of 
our social organization, to the necessities and 
interests of slavery. We are summioned to sur^ 
render. Let us for a moment judge the people 
of the free states by the meanest criterion we 
can think of; let us apply suppositions to them, 
which, if applied to ourselves, we would consider 
an i)isult. 

If the people of the free states were so devoid 
of moral sense as not to distinguish between 
right and wrong; so devoid of generous impulses 
as not to sympathize with the downtrodden and 
degraded ; so devoid of manly pride as to be 
naiurally inclined to submit to everybody who 
was impudent enough to assume the command — 
tell me, even in this worst, this most disgusting 
of all contingencies, could free labor quietly 
submit to the demands of the Slave Power so 
long as it has a just appreciation of irs own inte- 
rests 1 If we did not care, eitlier for other peo- 
ple's rights nor for our own dignity, can we sub- 
mit as long as we care for our own pockets 1 
Surrender the privilege of discussing our social 
problems without restraint ! Be narrowed down 
to a given circle of ideas, which we shall not 
transgress I Do we not owe our growth, and 
prosperity, and power, to that fieedom of inquiry 
which is the source of all progress and improve- 
ment 1 

Surrender the national territories to Slavery < 
Do we not owe our growth and prosperity to the 
successful labor of our neighbors just as well as 
our own ? Shall we consent to be surrounded 
and hemmed in with thriftless connnunities, 
whose institutions reiard their growth, and 
thereby retard our own 1 Abandon all laws like 
the Homestead bill, tending to establish free 
labor on our national domain! Shall we thus 
sive up the rights of labor, and destroy the in- 
heritance of our children '? 

Give up our opposition to the extension of 
Slavery by the conquest of foreign countries ! 
Shall we squander the blood of our sons and the 
marrow of the land in destructive wars, for the 
profit of the enemies of fiee labor, while it is a 
peaceful development to which we owe our power 
in the world ? Adopt the exclusive economical 
policy of the planting interest ! Shall our mineral 
wealth sleep undeveloped in the soil 1 Shall our 
water-powers run idle, and the bustle of our fac- 
tories cease 1 Shall the immense laboring f)rce 
in our increasing population be deprived of ihe 
advantage of a harmonious development of all the 
branches of human labor 1 Shall we give up 
our industrial and commercial independence from 
the world abroad 1 Impossible! It cainiot be 
thought of! Even the most debased and sub- 
missive of our doughfaces cannot submit to it af 
soon as the matter comes to a practical test ; and 
therefore the success of the Southern programme 
will never bring about a final decision of the con- 
flict. Suppose we were beaten in ihe piesent 
.electoral contest, would that decide the conflict 
of inte'ests forever 1 No! Thanks to the nobler 
impulses of human nature, our consciences would 



8 



not let us sleep ; thanks to the good sense of the 
people, their progressive interests would not 
suffer them to give up the struggle. The power 
of resistance, the elasticity of free society, can- 
not be exhausted by one, cannot be annihilated 
by a hundred defeats. Why 1 Because it re- 
ceives new impulses, new inspirations from every 
day's work ; it marches on in harmony with the 
spirit of the age. 

There is but one way of settling the " irre- 
pressible conflict." It is not by resisting the 
spirit of the times, and by trying to neutralize 
its impelling power; for you attempt ^hat in 
vain : hut it is hy neutralizing the obstacles which 
have thrown themselves into its path. There is 
no other. The irrepressible conflict will rage 
with unabated fury until our social and political 
development is harmonized with the irrepressible 
tendency of the age. 

Tiiat is the solution which the Republicans 
propose. Their programme is simple and con- 
sistent : 

Protection of our natural and constitutional 
rights. 

Non-interference with the social and political 
institutions existing by the legislation of sove- 
reign States. Exclusion of Slavery from the 
national Territories ; they must be free because 
they are national. [Immense cheering.] 

Promotion and expansion of free labor by the 
Homestead bill, and the encouragement of home 
industry. [Cheering renewed.] 

Will this effect a settlement of the conflict. 
Let the fathers of this Republic answer the ques- 
tion, and I will give you the Southern construc- 
tion of their policy. In a debate which occurred 
ill the Senate of the United States, on the 23d of 
January, Mr. Mason of Virginia said: "Now, as 
far as concerns our ancestry, I am satisfied of 
this — they were not Abolitionists. On the con- 
trary, I believe this was their opinion : their pre- 
judice was aimed against the foreign slave- 
trade, the African slave-trade, and their belief 
was, tlmt cutting that off. Slavery would die 
out of itself, without any act of abolition. I 
attempted at one time to show, by the recorded 
opinions of Mr. Madison, that the famous Ordi- 
nance of 1787, so far as it prohibited Slavery 
in the territory north-west of the Ohio, was 
aimed at the African slave-trade, and at that 
alone ; the idea being, that if they would restrict 
the area into which slaves would he introduced 
from abroad, they would, to that extent, prevent 
the importation of slaves ; and that, when it was 
altogether prevented, the condition of Slavery 
would die out of itself ; but they were not Abo- 
litionists, far less within the meaning and spirit 
of the Abolitionists of the present day." 

Well, I am willing to accept this, as it stands, 
and Mr. Mason may certainly be considered good 
Southern authority. I will not stop to investi- 
gate the depth and extent of the Anti-Slavery 
sentiments of such men as Franklin, who was the 
father of an Abolition society, and of Washing- 
ton, who expressed his desire " to see Slavery 
abolished by law ;" I am satisfied with Mr. 
Mason's admission. 

This, then, is what the fathers intended to 
effect, to bring about a state of things hy which 
Slavery would die out of itself. What else do 
we wanf? "You mean, then," I am asked, "to 
adopi a policy which will work the peaceful and 



gradual extinction of Slavery?" And I answer, 
" Yes ; for if we do not, we shall have to submit 
to a policy which will work the gradual extinc- 
tion of liberty." There is the dilemma. Our 
answer is understood. If Washington, Madison 
and Jefferson were Abolitionists, we are. Mr. 
Mason says they were not; well, then, we are 
not, for our policy has been theirs, and theirs 
has become ours. [Loud cheers.] 

Will this policy effect a solution of the con- 
flict '? It will ; because it will harmonize our so- 
cial and political development with the tendency 
of our age, by neutralizing the obstacles that 
stand in its way. 

But I am told that these obstacles refuse to be 
neutralized. They will resist. Resist by whaf? 
By dissolving the Union. The dissolution of the 
Union ! This spectre has so long haunted the 
imaginations of superstitious people, that it is 
time, at last, to anatomize the bloodless body. 

They threaten to dissolve the Union. Why 1 
First, because we do not stop the agitation of the 
Slavery question. It is true, we do discuss every 
social problem that presents itself to our consid- 
eration ; we agitate it, and we xio not mean to 
stop. And, therefore, slaveholders, you will dis- 
solve the Union 1 Do you think we shall make 
haste to stop the agitation — to muzzle our mouths 
and our press — after you have dissolved it 1 Uni- 
ted as we are with you at present, we certainly 
are not devoid of fraternal sympathy ; but let 
the acrimonious feeling arising from a divorce 
embitter our relations, will not the agitation, 
which annoys you now, be a hundred times more 
dangerous to you then? [Cheers.] 

Second. You threaten to dissolve the Union, 
because we do not show sufficient alacrity in the 
catching of fugitive slaves. True, Ave are not 
much inclined to perform for the slaveholder a 
menial, dirty service, which he would hardly 
stoop to do for himself. [Enthusiastic cheering.] 
And, therefore, you will dissolve the Union ! Do 
you not see that, while now, indeed, a great many 
slaves escape, the North would, after a dissolu- 
tion, scorn to surrender a single one? Would 
not what is now the Canada line be removed 
right to the banks of the Ohio *? 

Thirdly. You threaten the dissolution of the 
Union, because we do not mean to surrender the 
territories to slavery. True, we mean to use 
every constitutional means within our reach to 
save them for free labor. And, therefore, you 
will dissolve the Union ! Do you think that, after 
a dissolution, we shall courteously invite slavery 
to make itself comfortable on our national do- 
main'? As things are now, " champions of free 
labor," such as Douglas, may occasionally offer 
you a chance to acquire for slavery a territory 
" five times as large as the State of New York,'* 
but will that be possible after the Union is dis- 
solved 1 Mark well what position the North will 
take if, by a revolutionary act against our Na- 
tional Government, you should attempt to cut 
loose from the Union. The territories are the 
property of the Union as such ; those who, in a 
revolutionai'y way, desert the Union, give up 
their right to the property of the Union. That 
property, the territories, will remain where the 
Union remains, and the slave power would do 
well first to consider how much blood it can spare, 
before it attempts to strip the Union of a single 
square foot of ground. [Tremendous cheers.] 



Thus, while, according to Judge Douglas, you 
now have a chance to acquire slave territory by 
the operation of his " great principle," that 
chance will be entirely gone as soon as by a se- 
cession you give up the least shadow of a right to 
the property of the Union. 

Lastly, you threaten to dissolve the Union, if 
the North refuses to submit to the exclusive 
economical policy of the planting interest. You 
want to establish the commercial and industrial 
independence of the Slaveholding States. For 
years you have held Southern Conventions, and 
passed resolutions to that effect. You resolved 
not to purchase any longer the products of Nor- 
thern industrial labor, but to build your own 
factories; not to carry on your exporting and 
importing trade any longer by northern ships, 
but to establish steamship lines and commercial 
connections of your own. Well enough. Why 
did you not do it, after having resolved it 1 Was 
it want of money'? You have an abundance of 
it. Was it want of determination 1 Your reso- 
lutions displayed the fiercest zeal. What was it, 
then 1 And, indeed, the failure is magnificently 
complete. Senator Mason's homespun coat, 
sewn with Yankee thread and needle, adorned 
with Yankee buttons, hangs in the closet, a lone 
star in solitary splendor. [Loud laughter.] Af- 
ter trying to establish a large shoe factory for 
the South, you came after a while to the irresis- 
tible conclusion that you must wear Massachu- 
Betts shoes and boots or go barefooted. And 
even your Norfolk steamships are not launched 
yet from the dry docks of Southern imagination. 
[Laughter.] How is this ? I will tell you. The 
very same institution for the protection and per- 
petuation of which you want to establish your 
commercial and industrial independence is in- 
compatible with commercial and industrial labor 
and enterprise. 

For this there are several excellent reasons. 
First, that class of your society which rules and 
wants to perpetuate its rule, does not consist of 
working men. The inspiration of regular acti- 
vity is foreign to their minds. Living upon the 
forced labor of others, they find their pride in 
being gentlemen of leisure. But it requires 
men of a superior organization to make leisure 
productive; men of the ordinary stamp, who 
have too much leisure for doing something, will 
in most cases do nothing. But it requires ac- 
tive labor to make us understand and appreciate 
labor ; and we must understand and appreciate 
labor in order to be able to direct labor. Hence 
the slaveholders cannot take the lead in such a 
commercial and industrial movement without 
changing the nature of their condition. But 
you may object, that they can at least encourage 
commercial industrj-, and leave the execution of 
their plans and wishes to others. Lideed ! But 
you must not forget, that in modern times the 
most active and enterprising class of society, as 
soon as it becomes numerous, will inevitably be- 
come the ruling class. How can, therefore, the 
slaveholders do as you say., without undermining 
the foundation of their own ascendency 1 But 
it is jusL that ascendency by which they mean 
not to weaken but to fortify. Do not bring 
forward this city of St. Louis as proof to the 
contrary. Your commerce and your industry 
are indeed largely developed, although Missouri 
is a Slave State, but do you not see that in the 



same measure as they rise, the ascendency of the 
Slave Power disappears 1 [Repeated cheering.] 
Thus this has become a free city on slave soil. 

But this is not all. Not only are the slave- 
holders, as a class, unfit to direct the commercial 
and industrial movement, but their system of 
labor is unfit to carry it out. Commerce and 
industry, in order to become independent, need 
intelligent labor. In the North every laborer 
thinks, and is required to think. In the South 
the laborer is forbidden to think, lest he think 
too much, for thought engenders aspirations. 
[Laughter and applause.] With us, progress 
and enterprise derive their main support, their 
strongest impulses, from the intellectual devel- 
opment of the working classes. We do not 
dread the aspirations arising from it; it is the 
source of our prosperity and, at the same time, 
of our safety. Our laboring man must be a free 
man, in order to be what he ought to be — an in- 
telligent laborer. Therefore we educate him for 
liberty by our system of public instruction. In 
the South, the intellectual development of tho 
laboring classes, necessary for intelligent labor, 
would create aspirations dangerous to your do- 
mestic institutions. Your laboring man must be 
a brute in order to remain what you want him 
to be — a slave. Therefore you withhold from 
him all means of intellectual development. 
Among our farms and workshops there stands an 
institution from which our system of labor de 
rives its inspirations ; that is our school-house, 
where our free laborers are educated. On your 
plantation fields there stands another institution 
from which your system of labor derives its in 
spirations ; and that is your school-house, where 
your slaves are flogged. And you speak of es- 
tablishing the commercial and industrial inde- 
pendence of the Slaveholding States ! Do you 
not see, that in order to do this, you must adapt 
your system of labor to that purpose, by making 
the laborer intelligent, respectable, and at the 
same time aspiring 1 But if by marking the la- 
borer intelligent, respectable and aspiring, you 
attempt to force industrial enterprise, in a large 
measure, upon the Slave States, do you not see 
that your system of slave labor must yield 1 To 
foster commerce and industry in the Slave States 
for the purpose of protecting Slavery — would 
it not be like letting the sun-light into a room 
whicb you want to keep dark 1 Hence the Slave 
States can never become commercially and in- 
dustrially independent as long as they remain 
Slave States. They will always be obliged to 
buy from others, and others will do their carry- 
ing trade. At present they do their business 
with friends, who are united to them by bonds 
of Union, They speak of dissolving that Union; 
then, as now, they will be obliged to transact 
the same business with us, their nearest neigh- 
bors, for if they could do otherwise they would 
have done so long ago. Would they prefer by the 
dissolution of the Union to make enemies of 
those on whom they will always be commercially 
and industrially dependent 1 

Thus, you see, Avould the dissolution of the 
Union in all points of dispute defeat the very 
object for which the South might feel inclined to 
attempt it. It would effect just the contrary of 
what it w^as intended for ; and indeed, if there is 
a party that can logically and consistently advo- 
cate the dissolution of the Union, it is the party 



10 



of extreme Abolitionists who desire to extinguish 
Slavery and to punish the South by a sudden 
and violent crisis. But as to the slave states, as 
long as they have sense enough to understand 
their interests, and to appi-ecutte their situation, 
they may thank their good fortune, if they are 
suffered to stay in the Union with confederates 
who are, indeed, not willing to sacrifice their 
own principles and interests to Slavery, but by 
the radiating influence of their own growth and 
energy will at least, draw the Southern States, 
also, upon the road of progressive development. 

But we are told that the people of tlie Slave 
States are a warlike race, and that they will gain, 
by force, what we are unwilling peaceably to 
concede. War ! What a charm there is in that 
word for a people of colonels and generals ! 
Well, since that old German monk invented that 
msisnificant black powder which blew the strong- 
holds of feudalism into the air, war falls more and 
more under the head of mathematical sciences. 
Don Quixote, who, undoubtedly, would have 
been a hero in the seventh century, would cer- 
tainly be the most egregious fool in the nine- 
teenth. I have nothing to say about the bravery 
of the Southern {)eople, for auglit I care they 
may be braver than they pretend to be; but I 
invite them candidly to open their eyes, like 
sensible men. 

I will not compare the resources of the South, 
in men and money, to those of the Noitli. although 
statistical statements would demonstrate the over- 
whelming superiority of the latter. We can afford 
to be liberal, and for argument sake, admit that 
the South will equal the Noith in numbers ; and 
if they insi.st upon it, excel us in martial spirit. 
But it requires very little knowledge of military 
matters to understand that, aside from numbers, 
equipment, courage, and di.scipline, the strength 
of an army consists in its ability to concentrate 
its forces, at all times, upon the decisive point. 
Providence is on the side of the big battalions, 
said Napoleon. That means not that victory 
will always be with the tnost numerous army, 
but with that which is always able to appear in 
strength where the decisive blow is to be struck. 

An army that is always scattered over a large 
surface is, properly speaking, no army at all. 
Even by a much less numerous, but concentiated 
enemy, it will be beaten in detail, division after 
divi.sion ; it is defeated before having lost a man. 
This is plain. 

The South thinks of going to war for the bene- 
fit and protection of Slavery. But Slavery is not 
merely an abstract principle ; Slavery consists 
materially in the individual slave-s — in so and so 
many millions of human chattels scatteed over 
so and so many thousands of squaie miles. In 
order to protect Slavery, it is essential that the 
slaveholders be protected in the possession of 
their slaves. 

I say, therefore, that Slavery cannot be pro- 
tected in general, without being protected in 
detail. But how can you ) rotect it in detail ? 
By guarding fifteen hundred mile« of northern 
frontier, and two thousand miles of se;icoast 
against an enemy who is perfectly free in liis 
movements, and aided by an extensive railroad 
system always able to concentrate his foic<'S 
wherever he pleases? It is impossible; the 
dullest understanding sees it. It may be said 
that it will not be necessary ; indeed, for the 



Free States it would not; tliey may, in order to 
concentrate their forces, expose their territory ; 
for the damages done by an invasion is easily 
repaired. The retreating invader cannot carry 
the liberties of the invaded country away 
with him. [Cheers.] Not so with Slavery. A 
northern A nti- Slavery army, or even a small 
flying corps invading a Slaveholding State 
would perhaps not systematically liberate the 
Slaves, but at all events it would hardly squan- 
der much time and health in catching the runa- 
way. The probability , therefore, is that wherever 
a Northern army appears, the Slaves disappear, 
and Slavery with them — at least for the time 
being. Invade a Free State and the restoration of 
liberty, after the attack is repulsed, requires only 
the presence of freemen. But the restoration of 
Slavery will require capital; that capital con- 
sisted principally in the Slaves ; the Slaves have 
run away, and with them the capital necessary 
for the restoration of Slavery. 

The Slave States, therefore, cannot expose 
their territory without leaving unprotected the 
institution for the protection of which the war 
was undertaken. They have to cover thousands 
and thousands of vulnerable points, for every 
plantation is an open wound, every negro cabin 
a sore. Every border or seaboard Slave State 
will need her own soldiers and more too, for 
her own protection ; and where will be the 
material for the concentrated army ? Scattered 
over thousands of miles without the possibility 
of concentration. 

Besides, the Slave States haibor a dangerous 
enemy within their own boundaiies, and that is 
Slavery itself. Imagine they are at war with an 
Anti-Slavery people, whom they have exaspe- 
rated by their own hostility. What will be the 
effect upon the slaves 1 The question is not 
whether the North will instigate a slave rebellion,* 
for I suiipose they will not; the question is, 
whether tliey can pievent it, and I think they 
camiot. But the meie anticipation of a negro 
insurrection (and the heated imagination of the 
slaveholder will discover symptoms of a rebel- 
lious spirit in every tri(le) will paralyze the whole 
South. Uo you rememl)er the effect of John 
Bi-own's attempt ? The severest blow he stiuck 
at the Slave Power was not that he distuibed a 
town and killed several citizens, but that he 
revealed the weakness of the whole South. Let 
Governor Wise, of Viiainia, carry out his threat- 
ened invasion of the Free States, not with 23, 
but with 2,300 followers at his heels — what will 
be the result 1 As long as they behave them- 
selves we shall let them alone; but. as soon as 
they create any disturbance they will be put into 
the station-house; and the next day we shall 
read in the newspai)ers of some Northei-n city, 
among the rei)orts of the police court: Henry A. 
Wise and others, fa- disorderly conduct, fined $5 
[lauiihter and applause] ; or, if he has made an 
attt^mpt on any man's life, or against our institu- 
i;ions, he will most certainly find a Northern jury 
proud enough to acquit him on the ground of 
incorrigible mental derangement. [Continued 
laughter and apnlause.] Our pictorial prints 
will have mateiial for carricatures for two issues, 
and a burst of laughter will ring to the skies 
from Maine to California. And there is the end 
of it. Butbehold John Brown with 23 men raising 
a row at Harper's Ferry ; the whole South frantic 



11 



with terror ; the whole State of Virginia in arms ; 
troops marcliiug and counterniarchiiig as if the 
battle of Austeilitz was to be fought over again ; 
innocent cows shot at as hh)odthirst3^ invaders, 
and even tlie evening song of the peaceful whip- 
pooiwills mistaken for the batile-cr}- of i-ebellion 
[incessant laughter] ; and those are tlie men who 
Avill expose themselves to the chances of a war 
with an Anti-Slavery pe<)i)le ! Will they not 
look upon every captain as a John Brown, and 
every sergeant and private as a Coppic or Ste- 
vens 1 Tiicy will not have men enough to quiet 
their feai's at home; what will they have to 
oppose to the enemy ? Every township will want 
its home regiment, every plantation its garrison ; 
and wliat will be left for the field army 7 No 
sooner will a movement of concentration be at- 
tem{)ted than the merest panic will undo and 
frustrate it forever. Themistocles might say 
that Gieece was on his ships; a French general 
might, say that the Republic was in his camp; 
but Sla\ery will be neither on the ships nor in 
the cami); it will be spread defenseless over 
thousands of square miles. This will be their 
situation; either they concentrate their forces, 
and Slavery will be exposed everywhere; or they 
do not concentrate them, and their strength will 
be nowhere. They want war 1 Let them try it ! 
They will tryii but once. And thus it turns out, 
that the very same thing that would be the cause 
of tlie war, would at the same time disable them 
to carry on the war. The same institution that 
wants protection, will at the same time disarm 
its protectors. Yes, Slavery which can no lon- 
ger be defended with arguments, can no longer 
be defended with arms. 

There is your dissolution of the Union. The 
Southern States cannot desire it, for it would 
defeat the veiy objects for which it might be 
undertaken ; they cannot attempt it, for Slavery 
would lay them helpless at the feet of the North. 
Slavery, which makes it uncomfortable to stay 
in tlie Union, makes it impossible for them to go 
out of it. What, then, will the South do in case 
of a Republican victory 1 I answer that question 
with another one : what can the South do in 
case of a Republican victory 1 Will there be a 
disturbance 1 The people of the South them- 
selves will have to put it down. Will they sub- 
mit ] Not to Northern dictation, but to their 
own good sense. They have considered us their 
enemies as long as they ruled us ; they will find 
out that we are their friends as soon as we cease 
to be their subjects. They have dreamed so long 
of the blessings of Slavery ; they will open their 
eyes again to the blessings of Liberty. They 
will discover that they are not conquered, but 
liberated. Will Slavery die out 1 As surely as 
Freedom will not die out. 

Slaveholders of America, I appeal to you. Are 
you really in earnest when you speak of perpetu- 
ating Slavery 1 Shall it nf^ver cea.se 1 Never 7 
Stop and consider where you are, and in what 
days you live. 

This is the nineteenth century. Never, since 
mankind has a recollection of times crone bv, has 
the human mind disclosed such wonderful pow- 
ers. The hidden forces of nature we have torn 
from their mysterious concealment and yoked 
them into the harness of usefulness ; they carry 
our thoughts over slender wires to distant na- 
tions ; they draw our wagons over the highways 



of trade; they pull the gigantic oars of our 
ships ; they set in motion the iron fingers of 
our machinery ; they will soon plow our fields 
and gather our crops. The labor of the brain 
has ex-alted to a mere bridling and controlling of 
natural forces the labor of the hand — and you 
think you can perpetuate a system which redu- 
ces man, however degraded, yet cai)able of 
development, to the level of a soulless machine 1 

This is the world of the nineteenth century. 
The last remnants of feudalism in the old world 
are fast disappearing. The Czar of Russia, in 
the fullness of his imperial power, is forced to 
yield to the irresistible mark of human progress, 
and abolishes serfdom. Even the Sultan of Tur- 
key can no longer maintain the barbarous cus- 
toms of the Moslem against the pressure of the 
century, and slavery disappears. And you, citi- 
zens of a republic, you think you can arrest the 
wheels of progress with your Dred Scott deci- 
sions and Democratic platforms ! [Enthusiastic 
cheers.] 

Look around you and see how lonesome you 
are in this wide world of ours. As far as modern 
civilization throws its rays, what people, what 
class of society, is there like you 1 Cry out into 
the world your wild and guilty fantasy of pro- 
perty in man, and every echo responds with a cry 
of horror or contempt ; every breeze, from what- 
ever point of the compass it may come, brings 
you a verdict of condemnation. There is no hu- 
man heart that sympathizes with your cause, un- 
less it sympathizes with the cause of despotism 
in every form. There is no human voice to cheer 
you on in your struggle; there is no human eye 
that has a tear for your reverses ; no link of sym- 
pathy between the common cause of the great 
human brotherhood and you. You hear of eman- 
cipation in Russia, and wish it should fail. You 
hear of Italy rising, and fear the spirit of liberty 
should become contagious. Where al. mankind 
rejoices, you tremble. Where all mankind love, 
you hate. Where all mankind curses, y^ou sym- 
pathize. 

And in this appalling solitude you stand alone 
against a powerful world, alone against a great 
century, fighting, hopeless as the struggle of the 
Indians against the onward march of civilization. 
Use all the devices which the inventi^-e genius of 
despotism may suggest, and yet how can you re- 
sist 1 In every little village shool house, the lit- 
tle children who learn to read and write are plot- 
ting against you; in every laboratory of science, 
in every machine shop, the human mind is work- 
ing the destruction of your idol. You cannot 
make an attempt to keep ])ace with the general 
progress of mankind without plotting against 
yourselves. Every steam whistle, every puffing 
locomotive, is sounding the shriek of liberty into 
your ears. From the noblest instincts of our 
hearts down to sordid greediness of gain, every 
impulse of human nature is engaged in this uni- 
versal conspiracy. How can you resist 1 Where 
are your friends in the North 1 Your ever ready 
supporters are scattered to the winds, as by en- 
chantment, never to unite again. Hear them, try- 
ing to save their own fortunes, swear Avith treach- 
erous eagerness that they have nothing in com- 
mon with you. And your opponents'? Your 
boasts have lost their charm, your threats have 
lost their terrors upon them. The attempt is idle 
to cloak the sores of Lazarus with the lion skin 



12 



of Hercules. We know you. Every one of your 
boasts is understood as a disguised moan of 
weakness — every sliout of defiance as a disguised 
cry for mercy. That game is played out. Do 
not deceive yourselves. This means not only the 
destruction of a party — this means the defeat of 
a cause. Be shrewder than the shrewdest, braver 
than the bravest — it is all in vain ; your cause is 
doomed. 

And in the face of all this you insist upon 
bugging, with dogged stubbornness, your fatal 
infatuation ? Why not, with manly boldness, 
swing round into the grand march of progressive 
bumanity ? You say it cannot be done to-day. 
Can it be done to-morrow ? Will it be easier 
twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful in- 
crease of the negro population will have aggra- 
vated the evils of Slavery a hundred-fold, and 
witb it the difficulties of its extinction ? Did 
you ever think of this ? The final crisis will 
come, with the inexorable certainty of fate, 
the more terrible the longer it is delayed. 
Will you content yourselves with the criminal 
words, "After me, the deluge?" Is that the 
inheritance you mean to leave to coming 
generations'? an inheritance of disgrace, crime, 
blood, destruction? Hear me, slaveholders of 
America ! If you have no sense of right, no 
appreciation of your own interests, I entreat, I 
implore you, have at least pity for your chil- 
dren ! 

I hear the silly objection, that your sense of 
honor forbids you to desert your cause. Sense 
of honor ! Imagine a future generation standing 
around the tombstone of the bravest of you, and 
reading the inscription: "Here lies a gallant 



man, who lived and died true to the cause — 
of human Slavery." What will the verdict be"? 
His very progeny will disown him, and exclaim, 
" He must have been either a knave or a fool ! " 
There is not one of you who, if he could rise 
from the dead a century hence, would not gladly 
exchange his epitaph for that of the meanest of 
those who were hung at Charlestown. 

Sense of honor ! Since when has it become 
dishonorable to give up the errors of yesterday 
for the truths of to-day ? to prevent future dis- 
asters by timely reforms'? Since when has it 
ceased to be the highest glory to sacrifice one's 
prejudices and momentary advantages upon the 
altar of the common weal 1 But those who seek 
their glory in stubbornly resisting what is glori- 
ous^ must find their end in inglorious misery. 

I turn to you. Republicans of Missouri : Your 
countrymen owe you a debt of admiration and 
gratitude to which my poor voice can give but a 
feeble expression. You have undertaken the 
noble task of showing the people of the North 
that the slaveholding States themselves contain 
the elements of regeneration ; and of demonstra- 
ting to the South how that regeneration can be 
effected. You have inspired the wavering masses 
with confidence in the practicbilitay of our ideas. 
To the North you have given encouragement ; to 
the South you have set an example. Let me en- 
treat yoa not to underrate your noble vocation. 
Struggle on, brave men ! The anxious wishes 
of millions are hovering around you. Struggle 
on, until the banner of emancipation is planted 
upon the Capitol of your state, and one of the 
proudest chapters of our history will read : 
Missouri led the van, and the nation followed ! 



THE 



EEPUBLICAN PLATFOEM. 



Resolved, That we, tlie delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the 
United States, in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our con- 
stituents and our country, unite in the following declarations : 

1. That the history of the nation during" the last four years has fiilly established the 
propriety and necessity of the organization and per|)etuation of the Republican party, 
and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and 
now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph. 

2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence and embodied in the Federal Constitution — " That all men are created equal ; 
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights ; that among 
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness ; that, to secure these rights, govern- 
ments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the 
governed" — is essential to the preservation of our republican institutions ; and that the 
Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and 
shall be preserved. 

3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in 
population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of 
wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad, and we hold in abhorrence all 
schemes for Disunion, come from whatever source they may : and we congratulate the 
country that no Republican Member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the 
threats of Disunion so often made by Democratic Members, without rebuke and with 
applause from their political associates ; and we denounce those threats of Disunion, in 
case of a popular overthrow of their ascendancy, as denying the vital principles of a 
free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason which it is the imperative 
duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence. 

4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the 
right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its 
own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfec- 
tion and endurance of our political fabric depends ; and we denounce the lawless invasion 
by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as 
among the gravest of crimes. 

5. That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehen- 
sions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially 
evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon 
the protesting people of Kansas ; in construing the personal relation between master 
and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons ; in its attempted enforcement, 
everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal 
Courts, of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest ; and in its general and 
unvarying abuse of the power entrusted to it by a confiding people. 

6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades 
every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and 
accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by 
favored partisans ; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at 
the Federal Metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively 
demanded. 

7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into 
any or all of the Territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at 



variance -witli the explicit provisions of tliat instrument itself, with cotemporaneous 
exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, 
and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country. 

8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of free- 
dom ; that, as our republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national 
territory, ordained that " no person should be deprived of life, liberty or property with- 
out due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation 
is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to vio- 
late it ; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a Territorial Legislature, or of any 
individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States. 

9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave-trade, under the cover of 
our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity 
and a burning shame to our country and age ; and we call upon Congress to take prompt 
and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic. 

10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the Legisla- 
tures of Kansas and Nebraska prohibiting slavery in those Territories, we find a practi- 
cal illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-intervention and Popular 
Sovereignty embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and a demonstration of the decep- 
tion and fraud involved therein. 

IL That Kansas should, of right, be immediately admitted as a State under the 
Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House 
of Representatives. 

12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by 
duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts as to 
encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country ; and we 
commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal 
wages, to agricultui-e remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate 
reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and 
independence. 

13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by 
actual settlers, and against any view of the Free Homestead policy which regards the 
settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty ; and we demand the passage by Con- 
gress of the complete and satisfactory Homestead measure which has already passed the 
House. 

14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our Naturalization Laws 
or any State legislation by which the rights of citizenship hitherto accorded to immi- 
gi-ants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired ; and in favor of giving a full 
and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or natural- 
ized, both at home and abroad. 

15. That appropriations by Congress for River and Harbor improvements of a national 
character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are 
authorized by the Constitution and justified by the obligation of Governm.ent to protect 
the lives and property of its citizens. 

16. That a Railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests 
of the whole country ; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and 
efficient aid in its construction ; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily Overland Mail 
should be promptly established. 

17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principTes and views, we invite the 
co-operation of all citizens, however difi"ering on other questions, who substantially agree 
with us in their affirmance and support. 

SUPPLEMENTARY RESOLUTION. 

Resolved., That we deeply sympathize with those men who have been driven, some 
from their native States and others from the States of their adoption, and are now exiled 
from their homes on account of their opinions; and we hold the Democratic party 
responsible for this gross violation of that clause of the Constitution which declares that 
the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citi- 
zens in the several States. 

Adopted at Chicago, May 17, 1860. 



EVEKING JOTJKNAL TRACTS, No. 12 



WU p»ti0tt»I §mxtima m& %timn. 



SPEECH 



OP 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT 



DETKOIT, SEPTEMBER 4, 1860. 



Fellow Citizens: 

We claim that our political system is a judicious 
one, and that we are aa intelligent and virtuous 
people. The government ought therefore not only 
to secure respect and good will abroad, but also 
to produce good order, contentment and harmony 
at home. It fails to attain these ends. The 
Canadians certainly neither envy nor love us. 
All the Independent American powers from the 
Rio Grande to Cape Horn, while they strive to 
construct governments for themselves after our 
models, fear, and many of them hate us. Euro- 
pean nations do indeed revere our constitutions 
and admire our progress, but they generally 
agree in pronouncing us inconsistent with our 
organic principle, and capricious. The President 
inveighs against corruption among the people. 
The immediate representatives of the people in 
Congress, charge the President with immoral 
practices, and the President protests against 
their action as subversive of the Executive pre- 
rogative. The House of Representatives organi- 
zes itself convulsively amid confessed dangers 
of popular commotion. The Senate listens "un- 
surprised, and almost without excitement, to 
menaces of violence, secession and disunion. 
Frauds and violence in the territories are pallia- 
ted and rewarded. Exposure and resistance to 
them are condemned and punished, while the 
just, enlightened and reasonable will of the peo- 
ple there, though constitutionally expressed, is 
circumvented, disobeyed and disregarded. States 
watch anxiously for unlawful intru.siou and 
invasion by citizens of other stales, while the 
Federal Courts fail to suppress piracies on the 
bigh seas, and even on our own coasts. The 



government of the Union, courts and submits 
to state espionage of the Federal mails, while 
the states scarcely attempt to protect the per- 
sonal rights of citizens of other states, peacefully 
pursuing harmless occupations within their fra- 
ternal jurisdictions. 

Are the people satisfied and content? Let 
their several parties and masses answer. Cer- 
tainly you, the Republi ans of Michigan, as well 
as the Republicans throughout the whole country, 
are not satisfied. But you are interested in a 
change of administration, and therefore perhaps 
prejudiced. Ask then, the Constitutional Union 
men, few and inefficient indeed here, but numer- 
ous and energetic elsewhere. They are not 
satisfied. If they were they would not be en- 
gaged as they are now, in a hopeless attempt to 
organize a new party without any principles at 
all, after their recent failures to combine such a 
party on obnoxious principles. But they also 
are interested and possibly prejudiced like the 
Republicans. Ai)peal then to the Democratic 
party, which enjoys and wields the patronage 
and power of the Federal Government. Even the 
Democrats are no less dissatisfied. They certainly 
are dissatisfied with the Republicans, with the 
National Union men, with their own administra- 
tion, with each other, and as I think even indi- 
vidually, with themselves. The North is not 
satisfied. Its masses want a suppression of the 
African slave trade, and an effect ual exclusion of 
slavery from the territories, so that all the new 
and future states, may surely be free states. The 
South is not satisfied. Its masses by whatever 
means, and at whatever cost, desire the estab- 
lishment and protection of slavery in the terri- 



tories, so that none of the new states may fail to 
become slave states. The East is discontented 
with the neglect of its fishery, manufacture and 
navigation, and the West is impatient under the 
operation of a national policy, hostile to its agri- 
cultural, mining and social developments. What 
government in the world but ours, has persistr 
ently refused to improve rivers, construct har- 
bors and establish light houses, for the protection 
of its commerce ? New and anomalous combin- 
ations of citizens appear, in the North justifying 
armed instigators of civil and servile war, in the 
South devising means for the disruption and dis- 
memberment of the Union. It is manifest, 
that we are suffering in the respect and confi- 
dence of foreign states, and that disorder and con- 
fusion are more flagrant among ourselves now 
than ever before. 

I do not intend to be understood that these 
evils are thus far productive of material suffer- 
ing or intolerable embarrassment, much less that 
the country is, as so many extravagant persons 
say, on the high road to civil war or disso- 
lution. On the contrary, this fair land we live 
in i.° so blessed with all the elements of human 
comfort and happiness, and its citizens are at 
once so loyal and wise and so well surrounded 
by yet unbroken guaranties of civil and religious 
liberty, that our experience of misrule at the very 
worst never becomes so painful as to raise the 
question how much more of public misery we 
can endure ; but it leaves us at liberty to stop now 
as always heretofore with the inquiry how much 
more of freedom, prosperity and honor, we can 
secure by the practice of greater wisdom and 
higher virtue ? Discontentment is the wholesome 
fruit of a discovery of maladministration, and 
conviction of public error is here at least always 
a sure harbinger of political reform. 

Martin Van Buren, they say, is writing a re- 
view of his own life, and our time, for posthu- 
mous uses. If it is not disrespectful, I should 
like to know now the conclusions he draws from 
the national events he has seen, and of which he 
has been an important part ; for he is a shrewd 
observer, with advantages of large and long ex- 
perience. To me it seems that the last forty 
years have constituted a period of signal and 
lamentable failure in the efforts of statesmen to 
adjust and establish a federal policy for the re- 
gulation of the subject of slavery in its relations 
to the Union. In this view I regard it as be- 
longing to the office of a statesman not merely to 
favor an immediate and temporary increase of 
national wealth, and an enlargement of national 
territory, but also to fortify, so far as the prescri- 
bed constitutional limits of his action may al- 
low, the influences of knowlege and humanity ; 
to abate popular prejudices and passions, by 
modifying or removing their causes ; to ascertain 
and disclose the operation of general laws and to 
study and reveal the social tendencies of the 
age, and by combining the past with the present, 
while giving free play all the time to the recipro- 
cating action of the many co-existing moral forces, 
to develop that harmonious system which ac- 
tually prevails in the apparent chaos of human 
affairs ; and so to gain something in the way of 
assurance as to the complexion of that futurity 
towards which, since our country is destined to 
endure, and insomuch as we desire that it may be 
immortal, our thoughts are so vehemently driven 



even by the selfish as well as by the generous 
principles of our nature. 

I have understood that John Quincy Adams, 
the purest and wisest statesman I ever know, 
died despairing of a peaceful solution of the pro- 
blem of slavery, on which he was so intently 
engaged throughout his public service. If we 
may judge from the absolute failures of Mr. Van 
Buren. Mr. Polk, Mr. Pierce and Mr. Buchanan 
in the respect I have mentioned, and if we take 
into consideration also the systems which Mr. 
Calhoun, Mr. Benton, Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster 
severally recommended, and which have subse- 
quently, failed to be adopted, we may perhaps 
conclude that the difficulties of establishing a 
satisfactory and soothing policy have overtasked 
even our wisest and most eminent statesmen. 
They certainly have been neither incapable nor 
selfish men. No age or country has been illus- 
trated by public characters of greater genius, 
wisdom and virtue 

It is easy to see, fellow citizens, that the fail- 
ure has resulted not from the faults of our 
statesmen, but from the peculiar constitutions 
and characters of political parties, on which 
they relied for power. Solid, enduring and con- 
stant parties, inspired by love of country, reve- 
rence for virtue and devotion to human liberty, 
bold in their conceptions of measures, moderate 
in success, and resolute throughout reverses, are 
essential to effective and beneficent administra- 
tion in every free state. Unanimity, even in a 
wise, just and necessary policy, can never be 
expected in any country all at once, and with- 
out thorough debate and earnest conflicts of 
opinion. All public movements are therefore 
undertaken and prosecuted through the agencies^^ 
not of individuals, but of parties regulated, 
excited and moderated, as occasion may require, 
by their representatives. He who proposes means 
so impracticable that he can win no party to 
their support, may be a philanthropist, but he 
cannot be a statesman ; and even when the leader 
in administration is thus sustained, he is, although 
never so earnest or wise, everywhere and at all 
times inefficient and imbecile, just in the degree 
that the party on which he depends, is incon- 
stant, vacillating, timid or capricious. What 
has become of the several political parties, which 
have flourished within your time and mine ? 
That dashing, unterrified, defiant party, whose 
irresistible legions carried the honest and in- 
trepid hero of New Orleans on their shields, 
through so many civil encounters — that generous 
though not unprejudiced Whig party, which 
apprehensive of perpetual danger from too radi- 
cal policies of administration, so often with 
unabated chivalry anfl enthusiasm, magically 
recombined its bruised and scattered columns, 
even when a capricious fortune had turned its 
rare and hard won triumphs into defeats more 
disastrous than the field fights which it had lost 
— the recent American party, that sprang at one 
bound from ten thousand dark chambers and 
which seemed only yesterday at the very point 
of carrying the government by a coup de main. 
All these parties, that for brief periods seemed 
so strong and so unchanging, have perished, 
leaving no deep impression on the history of the 
country they aimed to direct and rule forever. 
The Democratic party too that has clothed itself 
so complacently with the pleasant traditions of 
all preceding parties, and combined so felicitously 



the most popular of our national sympathies with 
the most inveterate and repulsive of our con- 
servative interests, that has won the South so 
dexterously, by stimulating its maddest ambition, 
and yet has held the North so tenaciously and 
so long, by awakening its wildest and most de- 
moralizing fears. What is its condition ? It is dis- 
tinguished in fortune from its extinguished rivals 
only, by the circumstance that both portions 
of its crew, divided as the hulk breaks into two 
not unequal parts, retain sufficient energy in 
their despair, to seize on the drifting wrecks of 
other parties, and by a cunning though hopeless 
carpentery, to frame Avrelched and rickety rafts 
on which to sustain themselves for one dark 
night more on the tempestuous sea of national 
politics. All these parties, it is now manifest, 
were organized not specially to establish justice 
and maintain freedom and equality among an 
honest, jealous and liberty loving people, but to 
achieve some material public advantage of tem- 
porary importance, or to secure the advancement 
of some chief to whose discretion, as if the gov- 
ernment were an elective despotism instead of a 
Republic, the distribution of its patronage and 
the direction of its affairs should be implicitly 
confided. They did indeed out of respect or 
fear of generous reforms, often affect to express 
elevated principles and generous sentiments in j 
their carefully elaborated creeds, but these 
creeds nevertheless, even when not ambiguously 
expressed, were from time to time revised and 
qualified and modified, so that at last the inter- 
preters who alone had them by heart, and were 
able to repeat them, were found perverting the 
constitution in its most unequivocal parts, and 
most palpable meaning, disparaging and reject- 
ing the Declaration of Independence, and stulti- 
fying the founders of the Republic. The parties 
thus constituted, dependent not on any national 
or even on any natural sentiment, but on mere 
discipline for their cohesion, and coming at last 
through constant demoralization, to assume that 
capital and not labor, property and not liberty is 
the great interest of every people, and that reli- j 
gion conversant only with the relations of men 
to an unseen and future world, must be abjured 
in their conduct towards each other on earth, 
have finally discarded justice and humanity from 
their systems, broken up nearly all the existing 
combinations for spiritual ends, and attempted to 
conduct aflfairs of government on principles 
equally in violation of the constitution and of the 
eternal laws of God's Providence for the regula- 
tion of the Universe, 

These views of the characters of our modern 
parties are by no means newly conceived on my 
part. In that high and intensely exciting debate 
in Congi-ess in the year 1850, which, overruling 
the administration of General Taylor, brought the 
two then dominating parties into a compromise at 
the time solemnly pronounced final, irrevocable 
and eternal, but which was nevertheless scattered 
to the winds of Heaven only four years afterward, 
the great statesman of Kentucky denounced pariy 
spirit as he assumed it to be raging throughout 
the country, as pregnant with the imminent and 
:ntoler.^ble disasters of civil war and national 
dissolution. I ventured then to reply that, in 
my humble judgment, it was not a conflict of 
parties that we then were seeing and hearing, but 
It was, on the contrary, the agony of distracted 
parties, a convulsion resulting from the too nar- 



row foundations of both of the great parties and 
of all the parties of the day, foundations that had 
been laid in compromises of natural justice and 
human rights — that a new and great question — a 
moral question transcending the too narrow creeds 
of existing parties had arisen — that the public 
conscience was expanding with it, and the green 
withes of party combinations were giving way 
and breaking under the pressure — that it was not 
the union that was decaying and dying as was sup- 
posed, of the fever of party spirit, but that the 
two great parties were smitten with paralysis, 
fatal indeed to them unless they .should consent 
to be immediately renewed and re-organized, bor- 
rowing needful elements of health and vigor from 
a cordial embrace with the humane spirit of the 
age. 

But, fellow-citizens, to exempt our statesmen 
by casting blame on our political parties, does not 
reach, but only approximates the real source of 
responsibility. All of these parties have been 
composed of citizens, not a few but many citizens, 
in the aggregate, all the citizens of the Republic. 
They were not ignorant, willful or dishonest citi- 
zens, but sincere, faithful and useful members of 
the State. The parties of our country, what are 
they at any time, but ourselves, the people of our 
country ? Thus the faults of past administration 
and of course the responsibility for existing evils, 
are brought directly home to yourselves and my- 
self — to the whole people. This is no hard saying. 
The wisest, justest and most virtuous of men oc- 
casionally errs and has need daily to implor'j 
the Divine Goodness that he be not led further 
into temptation ; and just so the wisest, justest 
and most virtuous of nations often unconsciously 
lose and depart from their ancient approved and 
safer ways. Is there any society, even of Christ- 
ians, that has never had occasion to reform its 
practice, retrace its too careless steps and discard 
heresies that have corrupted its accepted faith ? 
What was the English revolution of 1648, but a 
return from the dark and dangerous road of ab'> 
solutism? What the French revolution, but a- 
mighty convulsion, that while it carried a brave, 
enlightened, and liberty-loving nation backward 
on their progress of three hundred years, owea 
all its horrors to the delay which had so long 
postponed the needed reaction ! 

A national departure always happens, when a 
great emergency occurs unobserved and unfelt, 
bringing the necessity for the attainment of some 
new and important object, which can only be 
secured through the inspiration of some new but 
great and generous national sentiment. 

Let us see if we can ascertain in the presen. 
case, when our departure from the right and safe 
way occurred. Certainly it was not in the Re- 
volutionary age. The nation then experienced 
and felt a stern necessity, perceived and resolute- 
ly aimed at a transcendently sublime object, and 
accepted cheerfully the awakening influences of 
an intensely moving and generous principle. 
The necessity was deliverance from British op- 
prrssion; the object, independence ; the principle, 
the inalienable rights of man. The revolution 
was a success, because the country had in Adams 
and Jefferson and Washington and their asso- 
ciates, the leaders, and in the Whigs, the party 
needful for this crisis, and these were sustained 
by the people. 

Our departure was not at the juncture of the 
establishment of the constitution. The country 



then had and owned a new and overpowering 
necessity, perceived and demanded a new object 
and adopted a new and most animating prin- 
ciple. The necessity, the escape from anarchy ; 
the object, Federal Union; the principle, frater- 
nity of the American people. The Constitution 
with the Ordinance of 1787, practically a part of 
it, was not a failure, because Hamilton, Jay and 
Madison were competent, and the Federal party 
was constant, and the people gave it a confiding 
and generous support. 

It was not in 1800, that the national deviation 
took place. Then were disclosed a new public 
necessity, new object, and new principle. A 
separation and removal of aristocratic checks and 
interests from the mechanism of our republican 
institutions. The needed reform did not fail, be- 
cause Jefferson and George Clinton, with their 
associates braved all resistance, the Republican 
party defended, and the people sustained them. 

Again the departure did not occur in 1812. 
Then was discovered a farther necessity, bring- 
ing into view a farther object and introducing 
yet another new and noble principle of action. 
The necessity, a vindication of national rights ; 
the object, freedom of intercourse with mankind; 
the principle, the defence of our homes and our 
honor. The war of 1812 was a success, because 
Clay, Calhoun and Tompkins did not shrink 
from the trial ; the Republican party approved 
and the people sustained them. 

In 1820, however, the nation had unconsciously 
reached and entered a new stage in its successful 
career, namely, that of expansion. By purchases 
from France and Spain it had extended its bor- 
ders from the St. Mary 's southward around the pen- 
insula of Florida, and from the Mississippi to the 
Rocky Mountains, an expansion to be afterwards 
indefinitely continued. We all know the advan- 
tages of expansion. They are augmented wealth 
and population. But we all know equally well, 
if we will only reflect, that no new advantage is 
ever gained in national more than in individual 
life without exposure to some new danger. What 
then is the danger which attends expansion? It 
is nothing less and can be nothing less than an 
increase of the strain upon the bonds of the 
Union. The time had come to organize govern- 
ment finally in the newly acquired territory of 
Louisiana, on principles that should be applied 
thereafter in all cases of further expansion. This 
necessity brought into glaring light a new object, 
namely, since the only existing cause of mutual 
alienation among the states was slavery, which 
was already carefully circumscribed by the ordi- 
nance of 1787, that anomalous institution must 
now be further circumscribed by extending the 
ordinance to cover the new states to be established 
in the Louisianian purchase. To this end a new 
and humane impulse naturally moved the coun- 
try, namely, the freedom of human labor. 

But although statesmen qualified for the crisis 
appeared, no party stood forth to support them 
with constancy, and the country, after a tempor- 
ary glow of free soil excitement, subsided into 
cold indifference — and so a compromise was made 
which divided the newly acquired domain be- 
tween free labor and capital in slaves, between 
freedom and slavery, a memorable compromise, 
which, after a trial of only thirty-four years, 
proved to be effective only in its concessions to 
slavery, while its greater guaranties of freedom 
were found unavailing and worthless. History 



says that the compromise of 1820 was necessary 
to save the Union from disruption. I do not 
dispute history, nor debate the settled moral 
questions of the past. I only lament that it was 
necessary, if indeed it was so. History tells us 
that the course then adopted was wise. I do not 
controvert it. I only mourn the occurrence of 
even one case, most certainly the only one that 
ever did happen, in which the way of wisdom 
has failed to be also the way of pleasantness, and 
the path of peace. It was in 1820, therefore, 
that the national deviation began. We have 
continued ever since the divergent course then 
so inconsiderately entered, until at last we have 
reached a point, where, amid confusion, bewilder- 
ment and mutual recriminations, it seems alike 
impossible to go forward or to return. We have 
added territory after territory, and region after 
region with the customary boldness of feebly re- 
sisted conquerors, not merely neglecting to keep 
slavery out of our new possessions, but actually 
removing all the barriers against it which we 
found standing at the times of conquest. In 
doing this we have defied the moral opinions of 
mankind, overturned the laws and systems ot 
our fathers, and dishonored their memories by 
declaring that the unequaled and glorious con- 
stitution which they gave us, carries with it, as it 
attends our eagles, not freedom and personal 
rights to the oppressed, but slavery and a hate- 
ful and baleful commerce in slaves, wherever we 
win a conquest by sea or land over the whole 
habitable globe. 

While we must now, in deference to history, 
excuse the first divergence, it is manifest that 
our subsequent persistence in the same course 
has been entirely unnecessary and unjustifiable. 
New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Canada, what 
remains of Mexico, all the West Indies and Cen- 
tral America, are doubtless very desirable, but we 
have patiently waited for them, and are now 
likely to wait until they can be acquired without 
receiving slavery with them, or extending it over 
them. Nay, all the resistance we have ever met 
in adding Spanish American territories to our 
Republic, has resulted from our willful and 
perverse purpose of subverting freedom there, 
to blight the fairest portion of the earth, when 
we found it free, by extending over it our only 
national agency of desolation. We may doubt- 
less persist still further. We may add conquest 
to conquest, for resistance to our ambition daily 
grows more and more impossible, until we sur 
pass in extent and apparent strength the great- 
est empires of ancient or modern times, all the 
while enlarging the area of African bondage* but 
after our already ample experience, I think no 
one will be bold enough to deny that we equally 
increase the evils of discontent and the dangers 
of domestic faction. 

Fellow-citizens, while I lament the national 
divergence I have thus described, I do not 
confess it to be altogether inexcusable. Much 
less do I blame any one or more of our politicians 
or parties, while exempting otherr. All are, in 
different degrees perhaps, responsible alike, and 
all have abundant, if not altogether adequate ex- 
cuses. Deviation once begun, without realizing 
the immediate presence of danger, it was easier 
to continue on than to return. The country has 
all the time been growing richer and more pros- 
perous and populous. It was not unnatural that 
we should disregard warnings of what we were 



assured by higb though interested authorities, 
always were distant, improbable and even vision- 
ary dangers. It cannot be denied that the Afri- 
can races among us are abject, although their con- 
dition, and even their presence here are due not to 
their will or fault, but to our own, and that they 
have a direct interest in the question of slavery. 
Huw natural has it been to assume that the 
motive* of those who have protested against the 
extension of slavery, was an unnatural sympathy 
with the negro instead of what it always has 
really been, concern for the welfare of the white 
man. There are few, indeed, who ever realize 
that the whole human race suffers somewhat in 
the afflctions and calamities which befall the hum- 
blest and most despised of its members. 

The argument, though demanding the most dis- 
passionate calmness and kindness, lias too often 
been conducted with anger and broken out into 
violence. 

Moreover, alarms of disunion were sounded, 
and strange political inventions like the floating 
five ships sent down the St. Lawrence, by the 
besieged in Quebec, to terrify the army of Wolfe 
on the Island of St. Louis, appeared suddenly 
before us whenever we proposed to consider in 
good earnest, the subject of Federal slavery. 

We love and we ought to love the fellowship 
of our slaveholding brethren. How natural, 
therefore, has it been to make the concessions 
so necessaiy to silence their complaints, ratiier 
than by seeming impracticability in what was 
thought a matter of indifference, to lose such 
genial companionship. Again, at least, present 
peace and safety together, with some partial 
guaranties and concessions of freedom, were 
from time to time obtained by compromises. 
Who had the right, or who the presumption to 
say with the certainty of being held responsible 
for casting imputations of bad faith upon our 
southern brethren, that these compromises would, 
when their interests should demand it, be dis- 
avowed and broken 1 

Other nations, we have assumed, are jealous of 
our growing greatness. They have censured us, 
perhaps with unjust asperity, for our apostacy in 
favor of slavery. How natural and even patri- 
otic has it been on our part to manifest by per- 
sistence, our contempt and defiance of such in- 
terested and hostile animadversions. Besides, 
though slavery is indeed now practically a local 
and peculiar institution of the South, it was not 
long ago the habit and practice of the whole 
American people. It is only twenty-five years 
since our British brethren abolished slavery in 
their colonies, and only half a century since we 
or any European nation interdicted the African 
slave trade. Scarcely three generations have 
passed away, since the subject of the wrongful- 
ness of slavery first engaged the consideration 
of mankind. 

You and I indeed understand now very well, 
how it is, that slavery in the territories of the 
United States, is left open by the constitution to 
our utmost peaceful opposition, while within the 
slave states, it is entrenched behind local consti- 
tutions beyond the reach of external leoislation. 
But the subject is a complex one, and the great 
masses of the people to whom it has only been 
recently presented, and doubtlessly often pie- 
sented, under unfavorable circumstances, might 
well desire time for its careful and deliberate 
examination. 



It seems a bold suggestion to say, that a great 
nation ought to reconsider a practice of forty 
years' duration ; but forty years of a nation's life, 
are equivalent to only one year in the life of an 
individual. The thought is at least consistent 
with political philosophy, for it is not more true 
that personal persistence in error leads inevitably 
to ruin, than it is that every nation exists by 
obedience to the same moral laws which direct 
individual life, that they are written in its origi- 
nal constitution, and it must continually reform 
itself according to the spirit of those laws, or 
perish. 

My humble advice, then, fellow citizens, is, 
that we return and re-establish the original policy 
of the nation, and henceforth hold, as we did in 
the beginning, that slavery is and must be only 
a purely local, temporary and exceptional insti- 
tution, confined within the slave states where it 
already exists, while Freedom is the general, 
normal, enduring and permanent condition of 
society within the jurisdiction, and under the 
authority of the Constitution of the United 
States. 

I counsel thus for a simple reason incapable of 
illumination. Slavery , however it may be at any 
time or in any place excused, is at all times and 
everywhere unjust and inhuman in its very 
nature ; while freedom, however it maybe at any 
time or in any place neglected, denied, or abused, 
is in its nature right, just and beneficent. It can 
never under any cirumstances be wise to perse- 
vere voluntarily, in extending or fortifying an 
institution that is intrinsically wrong or cruel 
It can never be unwise wherever it is possible, to 
defend and fortify an existing institution that is 
founded on the rights of Human Nature. In- 
somuch as opinions are so materially, and 
yet so unconsciously affected and modified by 
time, place and circumstances, we may hold 
these great truths firmly, without impeaching 
the convictions or the motives of those who 
deny them in argument or in practice. 

I counsel thus for another reason quite as sim- 
ple as the first. Knowledge, emulation and in- 
dependence among the members of a social state 
are the chief elements of national wealth, strength 
and power. Ignorance, indolence and bondage 
of individuals are always sources of national im- 
becility and decline. All nations in their turns 
have practised slavery. Most of them have abo- 
lished it. The world over, the wealthiest and 
most powerful nations have been those which 
tolerated it least, and which earliest and most 
comi)letely abolished it. Virginia and Texas are 
thrown into a panic even now by the appearance 
or even the suspicion of a handful of men within 
their borders, instigating civil war. Massachu- 
setts and Vermont defied British invasion, back- 
ed by treason, eighty years ago. 

Thirdly, there is no necessity now to fortify or 
extend slavery within the United States or on the 
American continent. All the supposed necessi- 
ties of that sort ever before known, have passed 
away forever. Let us briefly review them. With 
the discovery and conquest of America confess- 
edly came a responsibility to reclaim it from na- 
ture and to introduce civilization. Unfortu- 
nately Spain and Portugal, the discoverers and 
conquerors, were of all the European States in 
the sixteenth century, the worst qualified and 
least able to colonize. They were neither popu- 
lous, nor industrious, nor free; but were na 



tions of princes and subjects ; of soldiers, navi- 
gators, nobles, priests, poets and scholars, with- 
out merchants, mechanics, farmers, or laborers. 
The art of navigation was imperfect ; its practice 
dangerous, and the new world that the Pope had 
divided between his two most loyal crown wear- 
ing children was in its natural state pestilential. 
European emigration was therefore impracticable. 
In the emergency the conquerors, with ruffian 
violence, swept off at once the gold and silver or- 
naments which they found in the temples and 
on the persons of the natives, ignorant of their 
European values, and subjugated and enslaved 
the natives themselves. But these simple chil- 
dren of the forest, like the wild flowers when the 
hurricane sweeps over the prairies, perished un- 
der cruelties so contrary to nature. 

The African trade, in prisoners of war spared 
from slaughter, afforded an alternative. The 
chiefs sold ten men, women or ghildren, for a 
single horse. The conquerors of America brought 
this unnatural merchandise to our coasts. When 
the English colonists of North America, happily 
in only a very limited degree, borrowed from 
their predecessors this bad practice of slavery, 
they borrowed also its wretched apology, a want 
of an adequate supply of free labor. It was then 
thought an exercise of Christian benevolence to 
rescue the African heathen from eternal suffering 
in a future state, and through the painful path of 
earthly bondage to open to him the gates of the 
celestial paradi.se. But all this is now changed. 
We are at last no feeble or sickly colonies, but a 
great, populous, homogeneous nation, unsur- 
passed and unequaled in all the elements of 
colonization and civilization. Free labor hero 
continually increases and abounds, and is fast 
verging towards European standards of value. 
There is not one acre too much in our broad 
domain for the supply of even three generations 
of our free population, with their certain increase. 
Immigration from Europe is crowding our own 
gous into the western region, and this movement 
is daily augmented by the application of new 
machines for diminishing mechanical and even 
agricultural labor. At this very moment. Con- 
gress, after a long and obstinate reluctance, finds 
itself obliged to yield a homestead law to relieve 
the pressure of labor in the Atlantic States. Cer- 
tainly, therefore, we have no need and no room 
for African slaves in the Federal territories. Do 
you say that we want more sugar and more cot- 
ton, and therefore must have more slaves and 
more slave labor. I answer, first, that no class 
or race of men have a right to demand sugar, 
cotton, or any other comfort of human life to be 
wrung for them, through the action of the Fede- 
ral Government, from the unrewarded and com- 
pulsory labor of any other class or race of men. 

I answer, secondly, that we have sugar and 
cotton enough already for domestic consumption 
and a surplus of the latter for exportation with- 
out any increase of slave territory. Do you say 
that Europe wants more sugar and cotton than 
we can now supply 1 I reply, let then Europe 
send her free laborers hither, or into Italy, or into 
the West Indies, or into the East ; or if it suit 
them better, let them engage the ua'dves of cotton 
growing regions in the old world, to produce 
cotton and sugar voluntarily and for adequate 
compensation. Such a course, instead of fortify- 
ing and enlarging the sway of slavery here, will 
leave us free to favor its gradual removal. It will 



renew or introduce civilization on the shores of 
the Mediterranean and throughout the coasts of 
the Indian Ocean, Christianity, more fully deve- 
loped and better understood now than hereto- 
fore, turns with disgust and horror from the em- 
ployment of force and piracy as a necessary 
agency of the Gospel. 

Fourthly. All the subtle evasions and plausible 
political theories which have heretofore been 
brought into the argument for an extension of 
slavery, have at last been found' fallacious and 
frivolous. 

It is unavailing now to say that this govern- 
ment w-as made by and for white men only, since 
even slaves owed allegiance to Great Britain bo- 
fore the Revolution equally with white men, and 
were equally absolved from it by the Revolution, 
and are not only held to allegiance now under 
our laws, but are also subjected to taxation and 
actual representation in every department of the 
Federal Government. No government can ex- 
cuse itself from the duty of protecting the 
extreme rights of every human being, whether 
foreign or native born, bond or free, whom it 
compulsorily holds within its jurisdiction. The 
great fact is now fully realized that the African 
race hei-e is a foreign and feeble element like the 
Indians, incapable of assimilation, but not the 
less, therefore, entitled to such care and protec- 
tion as the weak everywhere may require from 
the strong ; that it is a pitiful exotic unwisely and 
unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and 
which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of 
the desolation of the native vinyard. Nor will the 
argument that the party of slavery is national 
and that of freedom sectional, any longer avail 
when it is fully understood, that so far as it 
is founded in truth, it is only a result of that 
perversion of the constitution which has at- 
tempted to circumscribe freedom, and to make 
slavery universal throughout the Republic. 
Equally do the reproaches, invectives and satires 
of the advocates of slavery extension fail, ^ince 
it is seen and felt that truth, reason and human- 
ity, can work right on without fanaticism and 
bear contumely without retaliation. I counsel 
his course farther, because the combinations of 
slavery are broken up, and can never be renewed 
with success. Any new combination must be 
based on the principle of the Southern Demo- 
cratic faction, that slavery is inherently just and 
beneficent, and ought to bo protected, which 
can no longer be tolerated in the North ; or else 
on the principle of the Northern Democratic 
faction that slavery is indifferent and unworthy 
of federal protection, which is insufficient in the 
South, while the national mind has actually 
passed /ar beyond both of these principles, and 
is settled in the conviction that slavery, where- 
ever and howsoever it exists, exists only to be 
regretted and deplored. 

I counsel this course farther, because the 
necessitj'^ for a return to the old national way 
has become at last absolute and imperative. We 
can extend tslavery into new territories, and cre- 
ate new slave states only by re-opening the 
African slave trade ; a proceeding which, by 
destroying all the existing values of the slaves 
now held in the country, and their increase, 
would bring the north and the south into com- 
plete unanimity in favor of that return. 

Finally I counsel that return because a States- 
man has been designated who possesses, in an 



eminent and most satisfactory degree, the virtues 
and the qualifications necessary for the leader in 
so great and generous a movement ; and I feel 
well assured that Abraham Lixcolx will not fail 
to re-inaugurate the ancient constitutional policy 
in the administration of the government success- 
fully, because the Republican party, after ample 
experience, has at last acquired the coiirage and 
the constancy necessary to sustain him, and be- 
cause I am satisfied that the people, at last fully 
couvinced of the wisdom and necessity of the 
proposed reformation, are prepared to sustain 
and give it effect. 

Bud when it shall have been accomplished, 
what may we expect then ; what dangers must 
w-e incur ; what disasters and calamities must we 
suffer ? I answer no dangers, disasters or calami- 



ties. All parties will acquiesce, because it will 
be the act of the people, in the exercise of their 
sovereign power, in conformity with the consti- 
tution and laws, and in harmony with the eternal 
principles of justice, and the benignant spirit of 
the age in which we live. All parties and all 
sections will alike rejoice in the settlement of a 
controversy, which has agitated the country and 
disturbed its peace so long. We shall regain the 
respect and good will of the Nations, and once 
more, consistent with our principles, and with 
our ancient character, we shall, with their free 
consent, take our place at their head, in theii- 
advancing progress, towards a higher and more 
happy, because more humane and more genial 
civilization. 



§t^tmi 0f the United 3Mt^^ 



SPEECH 



DELIVERED BY 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT 



ST. PAUL, SEPTEMBER 18, 1860. 



Fellow Citizens: — One needs to have had 
something of the experience that it has been my 
fortune to have, living in a State at an early 
period of its material development and social 
improvement, and growing up with its growing 
greatness in order to appreciate the feeling with 
which I am oppressed on this, my first entrance 
into the capital of the State of Minnesota. 
Every step of my progress since I reached the 
Northern Mississippi has been attended by an 
agreeable and great surprise. I had early read 
the works in which the geographer had des- 
cribed the scenes on which I was entering, and I 
had studied these scenes in the finest produc- 
tion of art. But still the grandeur, the luxuri- 
ance, the benificence, the geniality of this region 
were entirely unconceived. When I saw these 
sentinel walls that look down on the Mississippi, 
seen as I beheld them in their autumnal verdure, 
just when the earliest tinges of the fall give va- 
riety to the luxuriance of the forest, I thought 
how much of taste and genius had been wasted 
in celebrating the highlands of Scotland before 
civilized man had reached the banks of the 
Mississippi. And then that beautiful Lake 
Pepin scene at sunset, when the autumnal green 
of the hills was lost in a deep blue hue that imi- 
tates that of the heavens. The genial yellow 
atmosphere reflected the rays of the setting sun, 
and the skies above seemed to come down to 
spread their gorgeous drapery over this scene. 
It was a piece of upholstery such as no hand but 
that of nature could have made ; and it was but 
the vestibule to the capital of the State of Min- 
nesota — a State which I have loved, which I 
ever shall love, for more reasons than time would 
allow me to mention, but chiefly because it is 
one of three States which my own voice has 
been potential in bringing into the federal Union 
within the time that I have been engaged in the 
federal councils. Every one of the three was a 
free State, and I believe, on my soul, that of the 



whole three Minnesota is the freest of all. (Loud 
applause.) 

I find myself now, for the first time, on the 
high lands of the centre of the continent of North 
America, equidistant from the waters of Hud- 
son's Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, from the At- 
lantic ocean to the ocean in which the sun sets 
— here, on the spot where spring up, almost side 
by side, so that they may kiss each other, the 
two great rivers — the one of which, pursuing its 
strange, capricious, majestic, vivacious career 
through cascade and river, and rapid , lake after 
lake, and river after river ; finally, after a course 
of twenty-five hundred miles, brings your com- 
merce halfway to the ports of Europe ; and the 
other, which meandering through woodland and 
prairie a distance of twenty-five hundred miles, 
taking in tributary after tributary from the East 
and from the West, bringing together the waters 
from the western declivity of the Alleghanies 
and those which trickle down the Eastern sides 
of the Rocky Mountains, finds the Atlantic 
Ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. ( A.pplause.) Here 
is the central place whence the agriculture of the 
richest region of North America must bear its 
tribute to the supplies of the whole world, (Ap- 
plause.) On the East, all along the shore of 
Lake Superior, and on the West stretching in 
one broad plain, in a belt quite across the conti- 
nent, is a country where State after State is yet 
to rise, and where the productions for the sup- 
port of human society in other crowded States 
must be brought forth. This is, then, a com- 
manding field ; but it is as commanding in re- 
gard to the destinies of this continent as it is in 
regard to its commercial future, for power is not 
to reside permanently on the eastern slope of 
the Alleghany Mountains, nor in the seaports. 
Seaports have always been overrun and com roll- 
ed by the people of the interior. The people of 
the inland and of the upland — those who inhabit 
the sources of the mighty waters — are they Avho 



10 



supply them with wealth and power. The power 
of this sovernment hereafter is not to be estab- 
lished on either the Atlantic or the Pacific coast. 
The seaports will be the mouths by which we 
shall communicate and correspond with Europe; 
bub the power that shall speak and shall com- 
municate and express the will of men on this 
continent is to be located in the Mississippi Val- 
ley, and at the sources of the Mississippi and 
the St. Lawrence. (Loud applause.) In other 
days, studying what might, perhaps, have seem- 
ed to others trifling or visionary, I have cast 
about for the future, the ultimate, central seat 
of power of the North American people. I had 
looked at Quebec and New Orleans, at Washing- 
ton and at San Francisco, at Cincinnati and at 
St. Louis, and it had been the result of my best 
conjecture that the seat of power for North Ame- 
rica would be yet found in the valley of Mexico, 
that the glories of the Aztec capital would be 
renewed, and that city would become ultimately 
the Capitalof the United States of America. But 
I have corrected that view, and I now believe 
til at the ultimate last seat of power on this con- 
tinent will be found somewhere within a radius 
not very far from the very spot where I stand, at 
the head of navigation on the Mississippi river. 
(Loud applause.) 

Fellow citizens, I have often seen, but never 
with great surprise, that on the occasion of a 
great revival of religion in a community where 
I happen to live, the oldest, the most devout, the 
most religious preacher, he whose life had seemed 
to me and to the world to be best ordered, ac- 
cording to the laws of God, and in affection to 
the interests of mankind — that such as he dis- 
covered, in the heat of this religious excitement, 
that he had been entirely mistaken in his own 
experience, and that he now found out, to his 
great grief and astonishment, that he had never 
before been converted, and that now, for the first 
time, he. had become a Christian. (Laughter.) 
While I stand here I almost fall into the notion 
that I am in the category of that preacher — 
(laughter) — and that, although I cannot charge 
myself with having been really a seditious, or 
even a disloyal citizen, or an unobservant public 
man, I have yet never exactly understood the 
duties that I owed to society and the spirit that 
belongs to an American statesman. This is be- 
cause I have never, until now, occupied that 
place whence I could grasp and take in the whole 
grand panorama of the continent, for the happi- 
ness of whose present people and of whose fu- 
ture millions it is the duty of an American 
statesman to labor. I have often said, and in- 
deed thought, that one would get a very adequate, 
a very his;h idea of the greatness of this Ameri- 
can republic of ours if he stood, as I have done, 
on the deck of an American ship-of-war as she 
sailed the Mediterranean, and, passing through 
the Ionian Islands, ascended the Adriatic, bear- 
ing at the masthead the stripes and stars, that 
commanded respect and inspired fear, equally 
among the semi-barbarians of Asia and the most 
polite and powerful of the nations of Europe — I 
have often thought that I could lift myself up to 
the conception of the greatness of this republic 
of ours by taking my stand on the terrace of the 
'Capitol at Washington, and contemplating the 
concentration of the political power of the Amer- 
ican people, and following out in my imagina- 



tion the despatches by which that will, after 
being modified by the executive and Ifegisslative 
departments, went forth as laws and edicts, and 
ordinances, for the government of a great peo- 
ple. But, after all, no such place as either of 
these is equal to that which I now occupy. 

I seem to myself to stand here on this eminence 
as the traveler who climbs to the dome of St. 
Peter's in Rome, and there, through the opening 
in that dome appears to be in almost direct and 
immediate communication with the Almighty 
power that directs and controlls the actions and 
the wills of men, while he looks down from that 
eminence on the priests and votaries who vainly 
tiy, by poring over books and prayers, to study 
out the will of the Eternal. So it is with me. 
I can stand here and look far off in to the North- 
west and see the Russian, as he busily occupies 
himself in establishing seaports and towns, and 
fortifications, as outposts of the empire of St. 
Petersburg, and I can say, " Go on ; build up 
your outposts to the Arctic ocean. They will 
yet become the outposts of my own country, to 
extend the civilization of the United States in 
the Northwest." So I look on Prince Rupert's 
land and Canada, and see how an ingenious peo- 
ple and a capable, enlightened government, are 
occupied with bridging rivers and making rail- 
roads and telegraphs, to develop, organize, create 
and preserve the British provinces of the north, 
by the great lakes, the St. Lawrence and around 
the shores of Hudson's Bay, and I am able to 
say, *' It is very well ; you are building excellent 
States to be hereafter admitted into the American 
Union." (Applause.) I can look Southward and 
see, amid all the convulsions that are breaking up 
the ancient provinces of Spain, the Spanish Amer- 
ican republics — see in their decay and dissolution 
the preparatory stage for their reorganization in 
free, equal and independent members of tha 
United States of America. Standing on such an 
eminence and looking with that far distant range 
of vision, I can now look down on the States and 
the people of the Atlantic coast — of Maine and 
Massachusetts, and NevvYork and Pennsylvania, 
and Virginia and the Carolinas, and Georgia and 
Louisiana, and Texas, and round by the Pacific 
coast to California and Oregon — I can hear their 
disputes, their fretful controversies, their threats 
that if their own separate interests are not grati- 
fied and consulted by the federal government, 
they will separate from this Union — will secede 
from it, will dissolve it; and while I hear on their 
busy sidewalks these clamorous contentions I 
am able to say, *' Peace ; be still. These sub- 
jects of contention and dispute that so irritate, 
and anger, and provoke you, are but ephemeral 
or temporary. These institutions which you so 
much desire to conserve, and for which you think 
you would sacrifice the welfare of the people of 
this continent, are almost as ephemeral as your- 
selves." The man is horn to-day who will live to 
see the American Union, the Amerecan people — the 
whole of them — coming into the harmonious un- 
derstanding that this is the land of the free 
man — for the free man — that it is the land for 
the white man ; and that whatever elemetvis there 
are to disturb its present peace or iriciiaie the 
passions of its possessors will in the end — and 
that end will come before long — pass away, with- 
out capacity in any way to disturb the harmony 
of or endanger this great Union. (Appl;iuse.) 



11 



Fellow citizens, it is under tlie influence of re- 
flections like these that I thank God here to-day, 
more fervently than ever, that I live in such a 
great country as this, and that my lot has been 
cast in it — not before the period when political 
society was to be organized, nor yet in that distant 
period when it is to collapse and fall into ruin, 
but that I live in the very day and hour when 
political society is to be effectually organized 
throughout this entire country. Fellow citizens, 
we seem here and now to feel, to come into tlie 
knowledge of, that high necessity which compels 
every state in this Union to be, not separated and 
several States, but one part of the American re- 
public. We see and feel more than ever, when 
we come up here, that fervent heat of benevo- 
lence and love for the region in which our lot is 
cast, that will not suffer the citizens of Maine, the 
citizens of South Carolina, the citizens of Texas, 
or the citizens of Wisconsin or Minnesota, to be 
aliens to, or enemies of, each other, but which 
on the other hand compels them to be members 
of one great political family. Aye, and we see 
more— how it is that while society is convulsed 
with the jealousies between native and foreign 
born in our Atlantic cities and on our Pacific 
coast, and tormenled with the rivalries and jea- 
lousies produced by difference of birth, of lan- 
guage and of religion, here in this central point 
of the republic the German, and the Irishman, 
and the Italian, and the Frenchman, and the 
Hollander, becomes, in spite of himself, almost 
completely, in l^is own eyes and in his children's, 
an American citizen. (Applause.) We see and 
feel; therefore, the unity, in other words, that 
constitutes, and compels us to constitute, not 
many nations, not many peoples, but one nation 
and one people only. (Applause.) Valetudina- 
rians of the North have been in the habit of 
seeking the sunny skies of the South to restore 
their wasting frames under consumption ; and 
valetudinarians of the South have been accus- 
tomed to seek the skies of Italy for the same re- 
lief. Now you see the valetudinarians of the 
whole continent, from the frozen North and from 
the burning South, resort to the sources of the 
Mississippi for an atmosphere which shall rein- 
vigorate and restore them to health. (Applause.) 
Do. you not see and feel here that this atmos- 
phere has another virtue — that when men from 
Maine and from Carolina, and from Mississippi 
and from New Hampshire, and from England 
and Ireland and Scotland, from Germany and 
from all other portions of the world, come up 
here into this same valley of the Mississippi, the 
atmosphere, when it once becomes naturalized 
to their lungs, becomes the atmosphere not only 
of health, "but of liberty and freedom "i (Ap- 
plause.) Do we not feel when we come up here that 
we have not only found the temple and the shrine 
of freedom^ hut that we have come into the actual 
living presence of the Goddess of Freedom ? (Loud 
Applause.) Once in her presence we see that no 
less capacious temple could be fit for the worship 
that is her due. 

I wish, my fellow citizens, that all my asso- 
ciates in public life could come up here with me 
and learn by experience, as I have done, the ele- 
vation and serenity of soul which pervade the 
people of the great Northwest. It is the only 
region of the United States in which I find frater- 
nity and mutual charity fully developed. (Ap- 
plause.) Since I first set my foot in the valley of 



the Upper Mississippi I have met men of all sects 
and of all religions, men of the republican party 
and of the democratic party and of the Ameri- 
can party, and I have not heard one reproachful 
word, one disdainful sentiment. I have seen 
that j'ou can differ, and yet not disagree. (Ap- 
plause.) I have seen that you can lore your 
parties and the statesmen of your choice, and 
yet love still more the country, and its rulers, 
the people — the sovereign people — not the squat- 
ter sovereignties, scattered so widecast in distant 
and remote Territories which you are never to 
enter, and so devised that they may be sold, and 
that the Supreme Court of the United States 
may abolish sovereignty and the sovereigns also. 
(Laughter.) You love the sovereignty that you 
possess yourselves, where every man is his own 
sovereign — the popular sovereignty that belongs 
to me, and the popular sovereignty that belongs 
to you, and the equal popular sovereignty that 
belongs to every other man who is under the 
government and protection of the United States. 
(Applause.) Under the influence of such senti- 
ments and feelings as these I scarcely know how 
to act or speak when I come before you at the 
command of the people of Minnesota, as a re- 
publican. I feel that if we could be but a little 
more indulgent, a little more patient with each 
other, a little more charitable, all the grounds 
on which we disagree would disappear and pass 
away, just as false popular sovereignty is passing 
away ; and let us all. if we cannot confess our- 
selves to be all republicans, at least agree that 
we are American citizens. (Applause.) I see 
here, moreover, how it is that in spite of sec- 
tional and personal ambition, the form and body 
and spirit of this nation organizes itself and con- 
solidates itself out of the equilibrium of irre- 
pressible and yet healthful political counter- 
balancing forces, and how out of that equilibrium 
is produced just exactly that one thing which 
the interests of the continent and of mankind 
require should be developed here — and that is a 
federal republic of separate republican and demo- 
cratic States. 

I see here how little you and I, and those who 
are wiser and better and greater than you or I, 
have done, and how little they can do, to pro- 
duce the very political condition for the people 
of this continent which they are assuming, and 
under which they are permanently to remain — 
and tliat is the condition of a free people. I 
see that while we seemed to ourselves to have 
been trying to do much and to do everything, 
and while many fancy that they have done a 
great deal, yet what we have been doing, what 
we now are doing, what we shall hereafter do, 
and what we and those who may come after us 
shall continue to be doing, is just exactly what 
was necessary to be done, whether we knew it 
or not, for the interests of humanity on thi.s 
globe, and therefore it was certain to be done, 
because necessity is only another expression or 
name for the higher law. God ordains that what 
is useful to be done shall be done. (Applause.) 
When I survey the American people as they aie 
developing themselves fully and perfectly heie. 
I see that they are doing what the exigencies (^f 
political society throughout the world have 
at last rendered it necessary to be done. Society 
tried for six thousand years how to live and in.j- 
prove, and perfect itself under monarchical and 
aristocratic systems of government, while prac- 



12 



tising a system of depredation and slavery on each 
otber ; and the result has been all over the world, 
a complete and absolute failure. At last, at the 
close of the last century, the failure was discov- 
ered, and a revelation was made of the necessity 
of a system in which henceforth men should 
cease to enslave each other and should govern 
tliemselves. (Applause.) Nowhere in Africa, in 
Asia or in Europe, was there an open field where 
this great new work of the reorganization of a 
political society under more favorable forms of 
government could be attempted. They were all 
occupied. This great and unoccupied continent 
furnished the very theatre that was necessary, 
and to it come all the bold, the brave, the free 
men throughout the world, who feel and know 
that necessity, and who have the courage, the 
manhood and the humanity to labor to produce 
this great organization. Providence set apart 
this continent for this work, and, as I think, set 
apart and designated this pan icular locality for 
the place whence shall go forth continually the 
ever-renewing spirit which shall bring the people 
of all other portions of the continent up to a 
continual advance in the establishment of this 
svstem. I will make myself better understood 
by saying that, until the beginning of the present 
century, men had lived the involuntary subjects 
of political governments, and that the time had 
come when mankind could no longer consent to 
be so governed by force. 

The time had come when men were to live 
voluntary citizens and sovereigns themselves of 
the States which they possessed ; and that is the 
principle of the government established here. It 
has only one vital principle All others are re- 
solved into it. That one principle — what is if? 
It is the equality of every man who is a member 
of the State to be governed. If there be not abso- 
lute political equality, then some portion of the 
])eople are governed by force, and are not volun- 
tary citizens; and whenever any portion of the 
citizens are governed by force, then you are car- 
ried so far backward a^ain toward the old sys- 
tem of involuntary citizenship, or a government 
by kings, lords and standing army. This was 
the great necessity, not of the people of the Uni- 
ted States alone. It was not even the original 
conception of the people of the United States 
that a republican government was to be estab- 
lished for themselves alone ; but the establish- 
ment of the republican system of the United 
Slates of America was only bringing out and re- 
ducing to actual practice the ideas and opinions 
which men had already formed all over the civ- 
ilized world ; and if you will refer to the action 
of our forefathers you will find that while they 
labored, as they miiiht well labor, to secure this 
government in its republican form for themselves 
and their posterity, yet they were conscious that 
they were erecting it as a model for the people of 
every nation, kindred and tongue under heaven. 
The old Continental Congress of 1787 declared 
that the interests of the United States were the 
interests of human nature, and that it was the 
])n;itical redemption of human nature that was 
to be worked out on the continent of North Ame- 
rica, and, as I have said, it is to be brought to its 
perfection here in the valley of the Mississippi. 
Now, fellow citizens, the framors of the Repub- 
lic conceived this necessity — they assumed this 
high responsibility. Tiiey never could have 
done so except for the crisis of the Revolution, 



which kindled enlightened patriotism within the 
bosoms of the people, and enabled them, for a 
brief period, to elevate themselves up above tem- 
porary and ephemeral interests and prejudices, 
and to rise to the great task of organizing and 
constituting a free government. The people un- 
derstood the great principle on which it was to 
be founded — the political equality of the whole 
people — and that they did so understand it you 
will see in the Declaration of Independence, in 
which, beginning to lay the foundations of this 
great republic, they laid them on the great truth 
that all men are created equal, and have inalien- 
able rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of hap- 
piness. But it was not the good fortune of our 
forefathers to be able to find full and ample ma- 
terials all of the right kind, for the erection of 
the temple of liberty which they constructed. 
Providence has so ordered it that all the materi- 
als for any edifice which the human head is re- 
quired to devise and the human hand to construct 
cannot be found aj)ywhere. If you propose to 
build a limestone house you may excavate the 
ground on which it is to be placed, and take 
from the bosom of the earth the stones, and lay 
them all away in their proper place in the foun- 
dation and walls But other mateiials besides 
the limestone enter into the noblest structure 
that you can make. There must be some lime 
and some sand, and some iron, and some wood, 
and you must combine materials to make any 
human structure. 

Even the founders of a greg-t republic like 
this, wishing and intending to place it on the 
principle of the equality of man, had to take 
such materials as they found. They had to take 
a society in which some were free and some were 
slaves, and to form a Union in which some were 
fiee states and sonic were slave states. They had 
the ideal before them, but they were unable to 
perfect it all at once. What did they do ? They 
did as the architect does who raises a structure 
of stone, and lime and sand ; and where there is 
a weakness of the material, and where the 
strength of the edifice would be impaired, he 
applies braces and props, and bulwarks and 
battlements, to strengthen and fortify, so as to 
make the weak part combine with and be held 
together in solid connection with the firm and 
strong. That is what our fathers intended to 
do, and what they did do, when they framed the 
federal government. Seeing this element of 
slavery, which they could not eliminate, they 
said, " We will take care that it shall not weak- 
en the edifice and bring it into ruin. We will 
take care tliat, although we' may allow slaves 
now, the number of slaves hereafter shall dimin- 
ish and the number of white men shall increase, 
and that ultimately the element of free white 
men shall be so strong that the element of .sla- 
very shall be inadequate to produce any serious 
danger, calamity or disaster." How did they do 
this 1 They did it in a simple way : by authori- 
zing Congress to prohibit, and practically by 
prohibiting the African slave trade after the 
expiration of twenty years from the establish- 
ment of the Constitution, su|)posing that if no 
more slaves were imported the American ])eople 
— then almost unanimously in favor of emanci- 
pation — would be able to eliminate from the 
country the small amount of slavery, which 
would be left to decay and decline for want of 
1 invigoration by the African slave trade. They 



13 



did another thing. They set apai-t the territory 
noithwest of tlie Ohio river — all of the unoccu- 
pied domain of the United States — for freemen 
only, declaring that neither slavery nor involun- 
tary servitude should ever enter on its soil. 
They did one thing more. They declared that 
Congress should pass uniform laws of naturali- 
zation, so that when the importation of African 
slaves should cease voluntaiy emigration of free- 
men from all other lands should be encouraged 
and stimulated. Thus, while unable to exclude 
slavery from the system, they provided for the 
development and perfection of the principle — 
gradually approaching it — that all men are born 
free and equal. 

ind now, fellow citizens, we see all around us 
the results of that wise policy. Certain of the 
States concurred partially in the policy of the 
fathers, I need not tell you what States they 
were. They were Massachusetts, Vermont, 
Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jer- 
sey and Pennsylvania. Some other States did 
not. I need not tell you what States they were. 
They were the six Southern States of the union. 
The six Southern States said: ''Although the 
Constitution has arrested the slave trade and in- 
vited immigration, and adopted the policy of 
making all the men of the States free and equal, 
yet we will adhere to the system of slavei-y." 
Well, what is the result 1 You see it in the 
cities of Boston, New York and Philadelphia. 
You see it in the wheat fields of New York, of 
Ohio, of Indiana, of Illinois, of Wisconsin. 
You see it in the flocks of sheep in Vermont and 
New Hampshire. You see it in the cattle that 
multiply and abound upon a thousand hills. You 
see it in the millions of spindles in the manufac- 
tories of the East, and in the forges and furnaces 
of Pennsylvania. You see it in the crowded 
shipping of New York, and in her palaces and 
towers, ambitiously emulating the splendors of 
the Old World, and grasping to herself the com- 
merce of the globe. You see even in California 
and Oregon the same results. You see them in 
the copper dug out on the banks of Lake Supe- 
rior, the iron in Pennsylvania, the gypsum in 
New York, the salt in Ohio and New York, the 
lead in Illinois, and the silver and the gold in the 
free States of the Pacific coast. In all these you 
see the fruits of this policy. 

Neither in forests, nor mines, nor manufacto- 
ries, nor workshops, is their one African slave 
that turns a wheel or supplies oil to keep the 
machinery in motion. (Applause.) On the other 
hand you see millions of freemen crowding each 
other in a perpetual wave, rolling over from 
Europe on the Atlantic coast, spreading over and 
building up great States from the foot of the 
Alleghany mountains, rolling over thence year 
after year, until they build up in nine years a 
capital in Minnesota equal to the capital built in 
any slave State in the Union in two hundred 
years. (Cheers.) You see here the fruits of this 
great policy of the fathers ; you see what comes 
of a wise policy. But do not let us mistake it 
for policy. It is not policy ; it is the simple 
national practice of justice, of equal and exact 
justice to all men — for this freedom which we 
boast so highly, which we love so dearly, and so 
justly, which we prefer above every other earth- 
ly good, and without which earth, is unfit for 
the habitation of man — M'hat is it 1 Nothing but 
you allowing to me my rights, and I allowing to 



you equal rights — every man having exactly his 
own, the right to decide whether he will labor or 
perish, wliether he will labor and eat, or will be 
idle and die — and if he will labor, for what he will 
labor and for whoni he will labor, and the risht 
to discharge his employer just exactly as the 
employer can discharge him. (Cheers.) You 
see the fruits of this policy in another way. Go 
over the American continent, from one end of it 
to the other, wherever the principle of equalit}'- 
has been retained, and every citizen of a Slate, 
and every citizen of every otlier State, and every 
exile from a foreign nation, may write, print, 
speak and vote — when he acquires the right to 
vote — just exactly as he pleases, and there is no 
man to molest him, no man to terrify him, no 
man even to complain. And now reverse the 
picture, and go into any State that has retaitied 
the principle of the inequality of man, and de- 
termined that it Avill maintain it to the last, and 
you will find the State where not even the native 
born citizen and slaveholder, or certainly none 
but him, can express his opinion on the question 
whether the Africaii i.s or is not a descendant of 
Ham, or wliether he is equal or inferior to the 
white man, and if he be inferior, whether it is 
not the duty of the white man to enslave him. 
No, *' mum's the word " for freemen wherever 
slavery is retained and cherished — silence, the 
absence uf freedom of speech and of freedom of 
the piess. What kind of freedom is that? Is 
there a man in Minnesota who would for one day 
consent to live in it if he were not indulged in 
the exercise of the riiiht to hurrah for Lincoln 
or to hurrah for Dtuiglas, to hurrah for freedom 
or to hurrah for slavery. I think that these 
180,000 people would be seen moving right out, 
east and west, into British North America or 
into Kamtschatka. anywhere on the earth, to get 
out of this luxuriant and fertile valley, if any 
power, human or divine, should declare to them 
that they spoke and voted their real sentiments 
and their i-eal choice at their peril. Now, fellow 
citizens, you need only look around through 
such a mass of American citizens as I can see 
before me, and you may go over all the free 
States in this Union, and you will find them 
every day of the week somewhere gathered to- 
gether, expressing their opinions, and preparing 
to declare their will, just exactly as you are 
doing. Does this, happen to he sol Is it man*8 
work, or device, or contrivance, that on this 
land, on this side of the great lakes, on this side 
of the Atlantic Ocean, on this side only of the 
Pacific Ocean, men may all meet or may all stay 
apart, may all speak, think, act, print, write and 
vote just exactly as they please, while there is no 
other land on the face of the earth where ten 
men can be assembled together to exercise the 
same rights without being dispersed by an armed 
band of soldiei's 1 Does it happen to be so in 
the United States or is it the result of that 
higher law, controlling the destinies of races and 
of nations of men, so as to bring out and perfect 
here what I have described as the great consti- 
tution of society, of a self-governing people, the 
practice of equal and exact justice among each 
other. Manifestly it is not of man's device or 
conirivance, but it is a superior power tliat 

" shapes our end?, 

Rough hew them how we may." 

Now, fellow citizens, while we see how obvi- 
ously this is the result of controlling necessity, 



14 



Is'U' ()l)viously we re;ui that it is in accovdanr-e 
w.ili the very pui-p..se of a beneficent Piovidein'e, 
liinv singular aud strange it is that so much 
pains have been tal^en to defeat and pi-event the 
organizatio-ii and perl'ection of this very system 
of government among us. What has not the 
nation seen done and permitted to be done at 
Washington 1 It has peimitted statutes to be 
made, and judgments to be rendered in its 
name, declaring that men are not freemen, but 
that in certain conditions and in certain places 
they are merchandise. The Supreme Court of 
the United States never rises without recording 
judgments and directing executions for the sale 
of men, women and children, as merchandise. 
And this is done in your name and mine. The 
Constitution never declared, never intended to 
declare, was never by its framers understood to 
declare, that any man could be a chattle and 
merchandise. (Applause. " Three cheers for 
that declai-ation.") All that it did declare was 
that all men should have rights to personal se- 
curity and personal liberty within the action of 
the federal government. You see how we have 
had new religious systems established among us 
teaching that the African slaves among us, all 
Africans, are the children of an accursed parent, 
who was cursed not only in his own person and 
in his own day and generation, but in all his 
generations, and teaching that everybody had a 
right to curse his generation. We have had 
religious systems established among us, teaching 
that it is our duty to capture and return to 
slavery slaves escaping from their masters, be- 
cause St. Paul sent back Onesimus, as they say, 
to his master — religious systems even teaching 
that it is the duty of men in a free State, not 
only to submit to laws passed for the purpose 
of extending human bondage, but even person- 
ally to execute them. You have seen in a por- 
tion of the Union how the great governing race, 
the white men, actually deprive themselves largely 
of the advantages of education and instruction 
for the greater security of keeping slaves in 
ignorance, so that schools and colleges, libraries 
and universities, as they are organized and per- 
fected in the free States, and now in most of the 
States of Western Europe, are incapable of being 
had or maintained in the slave States. You have 
seen how we have, in order to counteract the 
policy of our forefathers on the subject of slavery, 
surrendered in 1820 the State of Missouri and all 
that part of the Territory of Louisiana that lies 
south 36° 30' to slavery, and contented ourselves 
with saving to freedom what lay north of that 
line : and you have seen how, only forty years 
afterwards in order to counteract and entirely 
defeat the policy of the fathers in establishing 
such institutions as those, we surrendered and 
gave up the whole of what we had saved in 1820, 
surrendering Kansas and the whole of our pos- 
sessions from one end of the continent to the 
other, to be made slave colonies and slave States, 
if slave owners could make them so, and agree- 
ing that we would receive them into the Union, 
as we had already for like considerations agreed 
to receive four slave States out of Texas, to the 
end that government might not continue to be, 
and develop itself to be, a government founded 
on the equality of man, but should be and 
remain forever a government founded on the 
principle of property in man. You have seen, 
fellov/ citizens, within the last thirty years, how 



the Congress of the United States, in order to 
defeat tlie great policy, has suppressed for a 
period of nearly ten years freedom of debate and 
the right of petition on the subject of slavery in 
the House of Representatives and in the Senate 
of the United States. You know now how the 
riiails of the United States are subjected to es- 
pionage, to the end that any paper, or letter, or 
waiting that shall argue for freedom againsi; 
slavery, shall be abstracted and withdrawn, in 
order to fortify the power of slavery. You have 
seen the federal government connive and co- 
operate and combine with the slave party in en- 
deavoring to force slavery on the people of 
Kansas when they had refused to accept* it. If 
you have seen all these things done, I am sorry 
to say that most of you have, at some time ia 
your lives, given your consent that they should 
be done. The American people have consented 
to all this action of their own government to 
counteract and subvert the very principles of 
freedom established by the constitution. 

Now, since all this has been done, let us see 
what is the result after all — what advantage ha.s 
.slavery got, and what has freedom lost, while we 
have for forty years given our free consent that 
freedom should be stripped of everything and 
that slavery should be invested with all power. 
Why, they have arrested the march of emanci- 
pation at the line of Pennsylvania, and have 
left the ancient slavery still existing in Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Caro- 
lina and Greorgia ; and they have added to them 
some five or six slave States in the southwestern 
angle of the Ohio and the Mississippi. That i6 
all that they have done. And on the other hand, 
this great vital principle of the republic, this 
principle of freedom and equality, what has it not 
done 1 It has abolished slavery in seven of the 
original states, and has produced new and strong 
and most vigorous and virtuous States all along 
the shores of the great lakes and across to the 
valley of the Mississippi, and it has established 
freedom beyond the power of being overthrown 
on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean. 

Certainly, since we can lay so little claim to 
having produced these results by our own work, 
or wisdom, or virtue, what could it have been hut 
that overruling Power, which, hy its higher laiv, 
controls even the perverse wills of men. and which 
means that this shall he, hencefoi~th and forever, as 
it was established in the beginning, a land, not of 
slavery, bat a land, of freedom. (Cheers.) Fellow 
citxzens, either in one way or the other, whether 
you agree with me in attributing it to the interposi- 
tion of Divine Providence or not .^ this battle has 
been fought, this victory has been won. Slavery 
to-day is, for the first time not only powerless, but 
withoiit influence in the American republic. The 
serried ranks of party after party, which rallied 
under it to sustain and support it, are broken and 
dissolved under the pressure of the march — the 
great and powerful march-of the American people 
determined to restore freedom to its original and 
just position in the government. For the first time 
in the history of the United States, no man in a 
free State can be bribed to vote for slavery. The 
government of the United States has not the 
power to make good a bribe or a seduction by 
which to make and convert Democrats to support 
slavery. (Applause.) For the first time in the 
history of the republic the slave power has not 
even the power to terrify or alarm the freeman so 



15 



as to make him submit, and scheme, and coin- 
cide, and compromise. It rails now with a feeble 
voice, as it thundered in our ears for twenty or 
thirty years past. With a feeble and muttering 
voice they cry out that they will tear the Union 
to pieces. (Derisive laucjhter.) Who^s afaid? 
(Laughter and cries of " No one ! ") They com- 
l)laiu that if we will not surrender our principles, 
and our system, and our right — being a major- 
ity — to rule, and if we will not accept their 
system, and such rulers as they will give us, they 
will go out of the Union. Who's afraid 1 
(Laughter.) Nohody^s afraid-, nohody can he 
bought. 

Now,. fellow citizens, let me ask you, since you 
are so prompt at answering — suppose at any time 
within the last forty years we could have found 
American people in the free States everywhere 
just as they are everywhere in the free States 
now — in such a condition that there was no 
party that could be bought, nobody that could 
be scared — how much sooner do you think this 
revolution would have come, in which we are 
now engaged 1 I do not believe there has been 
one day since 1787 until now when Slavery had 
any power in this government, except what it 
derived from buying up men of weak virtue, no 
principle and great cupidity, and terrifying men 
of weak nerve in the free States. (Laughter and 
applause.) And now I come to ask what has 
made this great political change 1 How is it that 
the American people, who, only ten years ago, 
said, " Take part, take all " — who only six years 
ago, said, " Take Kansas, carry slavery over it," 
wIlo when the tears of the widows and the blood 
of the martyrs of liberty cried out from the 
ground and appealed to them for aid and help, 
and sympathy, said, " Let Kansas shriek ; " how 
is it that in the space of six years you have all 
become — the whole people of the North and of 
the Northwest, the whole people of the free 
States — have become all at once so honest that 
none of them can be bought, so brave that none 
of them can be scared 1 I will tell you. Theor- 
isls and visionaries on the Atlantic coast, who of 
all men in the world were safest from the inva- 
sion of slavery and had least to suffer from it, 
while these prairies and fields and wildernesses 
jvere as yet being filled up and organized, could 
not be convinced of the imminence of the danger. 
It has been next to impossible to convince the 
man who lives on the sidewalk of an Atlantic 
city, or even the farmer in his field, who lives in 
Ontario, or Cayuga, or Berks, or in any of the 
counties of the Eastern States, that it was a mat- 
ter of very great consequence to him, whether 
slaves or freemen constitute the people — the 
ruling power of the new States. But just in the 
right moment, when the battle was as good as 
lost, the emigration from the Eastern States and 
from the Old World, into Michigan, and Wiscon- 
sin, and Minnesota and Iowa, rose up in the exer- 
cise and enjoyment of that freedom which had 
been saved to them by the ordinance of 1787, 
and appreciating its value and importance, and 
xeeling, every man for himself, that he neither 
would be a slave, nor make a slave, nor own a 
slave, nor allow any particular man to make or 
buy, or own a slave within the state to which 
they belonged, they came like Blucher to the 
rescue, and the field of Waterloo was won. The 
Northwest has vindicated the wisdom of the 
statesmen of 1787, and tho virtue of the Ameri- 



can people ; and now since you were so deter- 
mined that slavery should be arrested and that 
freedom should henceforth be national and sla- 
very only sectional, we of the Atlantic States are 
becoming just as honest and just as brave as you. 
are. (Applause.) 

Fellow citizens, I must not be mis-interpreted. 
I have said that this battle was fought, and this 
victory won. I said so four years ago in the 
Senate of the United States, and perhaps I was 
thought to have thereby, instead of encouraging 
the great army of freedom to consummate its 
triumph, tended to demoralize its energies. I 
knew better. I knew that men woiked all the 
better, and are all the braver when they havo 
hope and confidence of success and triumph, in- 
stead of acting under the influence of despond- 
ency and despair. This battle is fought and this 
victory is won, provided that you stand deter- 
mined to maintain the great Republican party 
under its great and glorious leader, Abraham 
Lincoln, in inaugurating its principles into the 
administration of the government, and provided 
you stand by him in his administration, if it shall 
be, as I trust it shall, a wise and just, and good 
one, until the adversary shall find out thai he has' 
been beaten and shall voluntarily retire from the 
field. (Applause.) 

A voice — " We'll do it." 

Unless you do that, there is still danger that 
all that has been gained may be lost. There is 
one danger remaining — one only. Slavery can 
never now force itself or be forced from the 
stock that exists among us, into the territories 
of tlie United States. But the cupidity of trade 
and the ambition of those w1k«€ interersts are 
identified with slavery, are such tliat tliey may 
clandestinely and surreptitiously reopen, eitliei' 
within the forms of law or without tliem, tho 
African slave trade, and may bring in new car- 
goes of African slaves at SlOO a head and scat- 
ter them into the Territories ; and, once gettinj* 
possession of new territory, they may again oj)e- 
rate on the cupidity or the patriotism of tl)o 
American people. 

Therefore it is that I enjoin upon you all to re- 
gard yourselves as men, who, although you have 
achieved the victory and are entitled even now, 
it seems, to laurels, have enlisted for the war 
and for your natural lives. You are commiltecl 
to maintain this great policy until it shall havti 
been so firmly reinstated in the administration 
of the government, and so firmly established 
in the hearts, and wills, and affections of the 
American people, that there shall never be again 
a demoralization from this great work. We look 
to you of the Northwest. Whether this is to b6 
a land of slavery or of freedom, the people of 
the Northwest are to be the arbitrators of itsj 
destiny. The virtue that is to save this nation 
must reside in the Northwest, for the simple rea- 
son that it is not the people who live on the side- 
walks, and who deal in merchandise on the Atlan- 
tic or the Pacific coasts, that exercise the ])o\ver 
of government, of sovereignty, in the United 
States. The political power of the United Srates 
resides in the owners of the lands of the United 
States. The owners of workshops and of the 
banks are in the East, and the owners of t])e gold 
mines are in the far West ; but the owncs of the 
land of the United States are to be found along 
the shores of the Mississippi rivei', fVom .^^^^^v 
Orleans to the sources of the great rivers a m). iho 



16 



great lakes. On both sides of this stream are 
the people who hold in their hands the destinies 
of the republic. I have been asked by many of 
you what I think of Minnesota. I will not en- 
large further than to say that Minnesota must 
be either a great State or a mean one, just as 
her people shall have wisdom and virtue to 
decide. 

That some great states are to be built up in the 
valley of the Mississippi, I know. You will no 
longer hear hereafter of the " Old Dominion " 
state ; dominion has passed away from Virginia 
long ago. Pennsylvania is no longer the key- 
stone of the American Union, for the arch has 
been extended from the Atlantic coast to the 
Pacific Ocean, and the center of the arch is 
moved westward. A new keystone is to be 
built in that arch. New York will cease to be 
the Empire State, and a new Empire State will 



grow up in a northern latitude, where the lands 
are rich, and where the people who cultivate 
them are all free and all equal. That state which 
shall be truest to the great fundamental principle 
of the government — that state which shall be 
most faithful, most vigorous in developing and 
perfecting society on this principle — will be at 
once the new Dominion State, the new Keystone 
State, the new Empire State. (Applause.) If 
there is any state in the Northwest that has been 
kinder to me than the State of Minnesota, and 
if such a consideration could influence me, then 
I might perhaps have a feeling of emulation for 
some other state. I will only say, that every 
man who has an honest heart and a clear head 
can see that these proud distinctions are within 
the grasp of the people of Minnesota, and every 
generous heart will be willing to give her a fair 
chance to secure them. (Loud Applause.) 



M>U %sit: itsi f^jsitittg mA itsi fittg. 



SPEECH 



DELIVERED BY 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT 



DUBUQUE, SEPTEMBER 21, 1860. 



Fellow Citizens : He who could pass down 
the Mississippi, as it washes the shores of Iowa, 
and see the accumulated products of the harvest, 
waiting, under all changes of the weather, for 
means of transport to the eastern markets, and 
thence for distribution to the needy in every part 
of the globe, and be unmoved, must be an 
enemy of his race. He who could enter this, the 
principal seaport of tlie State, witness the signs 
of activity and thrift which appear on all sides, 
ascend the hills which overlook the town and 
river, and see the rich and useful minerals every- 
where and on every side extracted from the 
bosom of the earth and sent abroad to perform 
their part in the service of mankind, must be 
incapable of appreciating the elements of a great 
and prosperous people. 

I have seen, as have my fellow travelers, this 
exhibition ; and it may be not unpleasing to you 
to know the results of the observations we have 
made. It is that, although this town and State 
were stimulated to a high degree of activity, and 
to a very rapid process of development by the 
great tide of capital and emigration from the 
east, which was arrested in the revulsion of 1857, 
yet the basis of the prosperity of this city and 
State is sure and steadfast; the blood, after such 
increased activity in searching the distant parts 
of our great system, must needs return to the 
heart again in the East from which it flowed. 
But so long as a great nation like this remains at 
peace, the blood is not long in filling up again 
the storehouse of the heart. Within a year or 
two or three, the prosperity of Dubuquo and of 
Iowa will be renewed. 



Fellow citizens, we were tempted by the com- 
mittee who accompanied us to the heights which 
overlook the city, and who took us for politicians 
of a difierent class — we were tempted with the 
display before us. Here, they said, at your feet 
lie three States, Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois — 
enough, they thought, to tempt ambitious poli- 
ticians as they supposed us to be. I ansAvered 
that the States which were desired by Northern 
politicians during my connection with public 
service, had been no such States as these which 
produce wheat, and corn and lead ; but they were 
States which lay further down the valley of the 
Mississippi ; the nearer the Gulf of Mexico the 
better. And my respected friend from Massa- 
chusetts remarked that they didn't seem to know 
what constitutes a State in the esteem of a north- 
ern politician ; it is negroes that constitute the 
State — politicians want slaves, and you have none 
to offer. 

Fellow citizens, we in the East are interested 
in your success, in your prosperity, in your ag- 
grandizement, for we in the East are but the con- 
sumers and the manufacturers and the sellers of 
what you create. We should soon languish and 
die if production were to cease in the valley of 
the Mississippi. Nor, perhaps, is it necessary to 
add. are you independent of us, for you are 
charged with the responsibility of supplying the 
materials of men and women, and of men for the 
defense of the liberties of this nation and its 
welfare. And if we of the East are feeble and 
imbecile, you in the West will languish and come 
down to the same common ruin with ourselves. 
It is therefore that w© propose to speak to you 



18 



on this occasion of what concerns us all ; a great 
political quesiioti, which is to be the subject of 
decision by the American people in the coming 
canvass. 

We who have come here from the East say that 
the national policy for the last forty years on the 
subject has been erroneous, false, and tends to 
ruin, and that it must be reversed. That policy 
simply, tersely stated is this : l^he policy of the 
Federal government has been to extend and for- 
tify African slave labor in the United States. 

Now lot there be no cavil on this point, for 
maijy who have maintained the administration 
and the party who have carried out this policy, 
have been unconscious, doubtless, of the nature of 
tlie policy tliey maintained. But it is not a subject 
of dispute or cavil what has been the policy of the 
government of the country for forty years. I will 
give but one illustration. No man in the nation 
would have objected or could have objected to the 
admission of Texas into the Federal Union provid- 
ed it had been a free state. No man who objected 
could have objected but for the reason that she 
was not a slave state. When the question of an- 
nexing Texas tried all the existing parties, and 
puzzled, bewildered, and confounded the states- 
men of the country, the question was finally 
decided, in a short and simple way, by the de- 
claration of the administration of John Tyler, 
made by Mr. Calhoun, his Secretary of State, 
that Texas must be annexed because it was a 
slaveholding country — it must be annexed with 
the condition of subdividing it into four slave 
states. Texas must be annexed for the purpose 
of fortifying and defending the institution of 
slavery in the United States. This one single 
fact upon which the parties joined issue, is con- 
clusive. I will not go further in showing that 
that has been the policy of the country for forty 
years. 

Now I have said that it is our proposition to 
reverse this policy. Our policy, stated as simply 
as I have stated that of our adversaries, is, to 
circumscribe slavery, and to fortify and extend 
free labor or freedon. Many preliminary objec- 
tions are raised by those among you and us, who 
are not prepared to go with us to the acceptance 
of this issue. They say that they are tired of a 
hobby and of men of one idea ; tliat the country 
is too great a country, and has too many interests 
to be occupied with one idea alone ; besides that 
it is repulsive, offensive, it is disgusting to have 
"this eternal negro question" forever forced 
upon their consideration when they desire to 
think of white men and other things. It is well, 
perhaps, to remove these preliminary objections 
before we go into an argument. ! 

Now, granting for a moment that there is wis- ' 
dom in the objection to entertain this eternal 
negro question, pray, let us ask, who raised, 
who has kept up this eternal negro question 1 

The negro question was put at rest in 1787 by 
the fathers of the Republic, and it slept, leaving 
only for moralists and humanitarians the ques- 
tion of emancipation, a question within the 
States, and by no means a federal question. Who 
lifted it up from the States into the area of fede- 
ral politics 1 Who but the slaveholders, in 1820 7 
They demanded that not only Missouri should be 
admitted as a slave State, located within the 
Louisiana purchase ; but that slavery should be 
declared forever and was forever without de- 
claration of law, established and should prevail 



until the end of time, in Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, 
and in every foot of the then newly acquired do- 
main of the United States 1 It was the slave- 
holding power which raised the negro question, 
and it was the Democratic party which made an 
alliance with that power, and which, in the 
North and in Congress, raised this very offensive 
question, this so very offensive legislation about 
negroes instead of legislation about white men. 

The question was put at rest by the compro- 
mise of 1820, when, God be praised, Iowa, Kan- 
sas and Nebraska were saved for freedom, and 
only Arkansas and Missouri, out of the Louisiana 
purchase, surrendered to slavery; and it slept 
again for fifteen or twenty years, and then the 
negro question was again introduced into the 
councils of the Federal government — and by 
whom 1 By the slave power, when it said that 
"since you have taken Iowa, Kansas and Ne- 
braska, and left us only Missouri, Arkansas and 
Florida, out of our newly acquired possessions, 
you must now go on and annex Texas, so that we 
shall have a balance and counterpoise in this 
government." Then the Democratic party again 
were seized with a sudden desire to extend the 
area of slavery along the Gulf of Mexico; and 
by way of balancing the triumph of liberty so 
as to hang manacles and chains on the claws of 
the conquering eagle of the country ! 

Who, then, is responsible for the eternal negro 
question 7 Still such was the forbearance, the 
patience, the hope without reason and without 
justice, of the friends of freedom throughout the 
United States, that the eternal negro question 
would have been at rest then, if it had not again 
been brought forward into the Federal councils 
in the years 1848 and 1850, when the slave power 
forced us into a war with Mexico by which we 
acquired Upper California and New Mexico, and 
for no other purpose but that, notwithstanding 
all the advantages which slavery had gained 
since the Atlantic States were free, now, as a 
balance, slavery must have the Pacific.coast, and 
so keep up the equilibrium (according to the 
notions of Mr Calhoun) between free labor and 
slave labor or between freedom and slavery in 
the United States. 

Thus, on these three different occasions, when 
the public mind was at rest on the subject of the 
negro, the slave power forced it upon public con- 
sideration and demanded aggressive action. When 
they had at last secured the consent of the peo- 
ple of the free States to a compromise in 1850, 
by Avhich it was agreed that California alone 
might be free, and that New Mexico should be 
remanded back into a territorial condition be- 
cause she had not established slavery — then there 
was but one man in the United States Senate 
that would vote to accept New Mexico as a Free 
State when she came with her constitution in her 
hands ; and that man the humble individual who 
stands before you. [Cheers.] Aye, you applaud 
me for it now; but where were your votes in 
1850 ? Ah ! well ; it is all past. 

When they had agreed on a compromise, and 
had driven out of the Senate every man but my- 
self and some half dozen other representatives 
who had opposed the aggressions of slavery, 
were they content to let the negro question rest 1 
No, but in 1854 the Democracy raised the negro 
question to force it finally and forever through- 
out the whole Republic, by abrogating the Mis- 
souri Compromise. They abandoned the Terri- 



19 



lories of Kansas and Nebraska to slave labor, | 
and actually assisted and encouraged the armies ' 
sent there by the slaveholders, to take forcible 
possession of territory which/ until then, had 
been free. 

0! what pleasur*^ shall I bave, in telling the 
people of Kansas, three days hence, how that 
when all others were faithless, aud false, and tim- 
id, they renewed this battle, this standard of free- 
dom, and expelled the iutrudins; slaveholder, 
and established forever amongst themselves the 
freedom of labor and the freedom of men on the 
plains of Kansas. 

Were the Democracy then content ? Not at 
all; but they determined in 1858, to raise the i 
negro question once more and to admit Kansas 
into the Union, if she would have come in as a 
Slave State, and to keep her out indefinitely if 
she should elect freedom. 

And only one year later, when they found that 
Kansas was slipping from their clutches, who 
then raised once more the eternal negro ques- 
tion ? The slave power and the administration 
took it up by demanding the annexation of 
Gabi, a slaveholding island of Spain, to be 
acquired at a cost of $150,000,000, peaceably, if 
it could be obtained for that sum, and forcibly if 
it should not be surrendered, for the purpose of 
adding two slave states, well manned and well 
appointed, to balance the votes of Kansas and | 
Minnesota, then expected to come into the Union } 
as free states. j 

Wiio has brought this issue and entered it on ; 
the record of this canvass ? The slaveholding 
party — the Deinocratic party. They held their 
Convention first in this campaign at Charleston. 
They presented again the everlasting negro ques- 
tion, nothing more, nothing less. They dif- 
fered about the form, but they gave us, never- 
theless, the everlasting negro question in two 
different parts, giving us our choice to take one 
or the other, as they gave the people of Kansas 
the choice, whether they would take slavery 
pure and simple, or take it anyhow and get rid 
of it afterwards if they could. 

Of one part, Mr. Breckinridge is the repre- 
sentative. It is presented plain and distinct; it 
is that slaves are merchandise and property in 
the territories under the Constitution of the 
United States, and that the national legislatures 
and the courts must protect it in the territories, 
and no power on earth can discharge them of 
the responsibility. Of the other, Mr. Douglas is 
the representative, and the form in which it is 
presented by those who support him is, What is 
the best way not to keep slavery out of the ter- 
ritories. 

I doubt very much, whether slaveholders have 
so great a repugnance to the negro and to the 
eternal negro question as they affect. On the 
other hand, being accustomed to sit in the Fed- 
eral councils, with grave and reverend Senators, 
and to mingle with representatives of the people 
from slaveholding States, I find a great difference 
between myself and them on the subject. God 
knows, I never would consent to be the unbid- 
den, the unchosen Representative of bond.nen! 
They must be freemen that I represent ; every 
man of them must be a whole man. But my 
respected friends who represent the slave States 
are willing, and do most cheerfully, most gladly 
consent to represent three-fifths of all the negro 



slaves. They take a slave at three- fifths of a 
man, and they represent the three-fifths ; [ doubt 
not they would be very glad if he could be cre- 
ated inti) five-fifths. 

Well I think the Democratic party has not so 
much repugnance to negroes and the negro ques- 
tion, because they consent to take offices of Pres- 
ident, Vice-President, Secretary of State, Minis- 
ters to Bogota, and to all other parts of the world, 
Consulships and post offices, that are derived 
indirectly by adding another link to the chain of 
States in which negroes count, each one, three- 
fifths. No, no ; slaveholders andthe Democratic 
party would be very glad to take votes from ne- 
groes, free or slave, by the head, full count, if 
negroes and slaves would only vote for Slavery ; 
and it is only because they have a sagacious in- 
sight into human nature, which teaches them 
that negroes and slaves would vote for liberty, 
that makes the negro question so repulsive to 
them. 

But, fellow citizens, is this one idea, the eter- 
nal negro question, so objectionable merely on 
account of the negro ? I think not : I think it 
far otherwise ; for after all, you see that the ne- 
gro has the least of everybody else in the world, 
to do with it. The negro is no party to it ; he is 
only an incident; he is a subject of disputes 
but not one of the litigants. He has just as much 
to do with it as a horse or a watch in a justice's 
court, when two neighbors are litigating about 
its ownership. The horse question or watch 
question is excellei:t business for the justice, 
and lawyers to make fees, and for the neighbors 
generally to get fan out of; and my friend Oen- 
eral Nye was never so happy in his life as when 
attending suits before justices of the peace, set- 
tling this eternal horse question and watch ques- 
tion. (Laughter.) 

The controversy is not with the negro at all, 
but with two classes of white men, one who have 
a monopoly of negroes, and the other who have 
no negroes. One is an aristocratic class, that 
wants to extend itself over the new territories 
and so retain the power it already exercises ; and 
the other is yourselves, my good friends, men 
who have no negroes and won't have any, and 
who mean that the aristocratic system shall not be 
extended. There is no negro question about it 
at all. It is an eternal question between classes — 
between the few privileged and the man}' un- 
privileged—the eternal question between aris- 
tocracy and democracy. 

A sorrowful world this will be when that ques- 
tion shall be put to rest ; for when it is, the rest 
that it shall have, shall be the same it has always 
had for six thousand years ; the riding of the 
privileged over the necks of the unprivileged, 
booted and spurred. And the nation that is 
willing to establish such an aristocracy, and is 
shamed out of the defense of its own rights, 
deserves no better fate than that which befalls 
the timid, the cowardly and the iinworthy. 

It is to-day in the United States the same 
question that is filling Hungary, and is lifting 
the throne of a Caesar of Austria from its pedes- 
tals ; the same which has expelled the tyrant of 
Naples from the beautiful Sicily, and has driven 
him from his palace at Naples to seek shelter 
in his fortress at Gaeta. It is not only an eternal 
question, but it is a universal question. Every 
man from a foreign land will find here in Ame- 



20 



rica, in< another form, tlie irrepressible conflict 
(Applause) which crushed liim out, an exile 
from his native land. 

Again, fellow citizens, I am not quite con- 
vinced tliat it is sound philosophy in anything, 
at least in politics, to banish the principle of 
giving paramount importance at any one time to 
one idea. If a man wishes to secure a good crop 
of wheat to pay off the debt he owes upon his 
land, he is seized with one idea in the spring ; 
he plows, plants and sows ; he gathers and reaps, 
with a single leading idea of getting forty bushels 
to the acre, if he can. If a merchant wishes to be 
successful, he .surrenders himself to the one idea 
of buying as cheap, and selling as dear as he 
honestly can. I would not give much for a law- 
yer who is put in charge of my ease, that would 
suffer himself, when before the jury, to be 
distracted with a great many pleasing ideas. 
I want one devoted to my cause In the 
church we have a great many clergymen who 
have a horror of this one idea and the negro ques- 
tion, but I think it was St. Peter who had it 
made known to him in a vision on the housetop, 
that he must not have scattered ideas ; but there 
was to be but one idea only, that was of being satis- 
fied with everything else, provided he could only 
win souls to his Master. And Paul was very much 
after this spirit ; he said he would be all things 
to all men, provided he could save some souls. 

There was in the Revolution one man seized 
with a terrible fanaticism, propelled by one idea. 
He scattered terror all through this continent ; 
and when he passed from Boston to the first 
Congress in Philadelphia, deputations from New 
York and Philadelphia went out to meet and dis- 
suade this man of one idea, namely, that of na- 
tional independence. And still John Adams 
proved, after all, to be a public benefactor. 
There was, during the Revolution, another man 
of one idea that appeared to burn in him so ar- 
dently that he was regarded as the most danger- 
ous man on the continent ; and a triple reward 
was offered for his head. He actually went so 
far as to take all the men of one idea in the 
country, and suffer himself to take command of 
them. That man was George Washmgton. His 
idea was justice, political justice. There was 
another monomaniac of the same kind down in 
Virginia ; he, at the close of the Revolution, had 
one idea, an eternal idea, and it even included 
negroes ; and that was the idea of equality. It 
was Thomas Jefferson. Now, though the State 
which reared him might be glad if it could erase 
from his monument at Mcnticello its sublime in- 
scription, yet the world can never lose that proud 
and beautiful epitaph, written by himself : 
"Here lies Thomas Jefferson, the author of the 
Declaration of Independence." 

About the year 1805 or 1806, the French Sec- 
retary for Foreign Affairs gave a dinner to the 
American representative at Court, and to Ameri- 
can citizens resident there, and there was a large 
and various party. When the wine flowed free- 
ly, and conversation ought to have been general, 
there was one young man who was possessed witli 
■one idea, and he could not rest, but kept con- 
tinually putting this ideabetbre the minister and 
the rest of the guests, saying, '• If you will only 
make up for me a purse, or show me a I'ank that 
will lend me five thousand dollars, I will put a 
boat on the Hudson river which will make the 
passage from New York to Albany at four miles 



an hour, without being driven by oars or sails," 
He was an offensive monomaniac, that Robert 
Fulton. But still, had it not been for his one 
idea, Iowa would have slept the last sixty years, 
and down to the twentieth century, and not one 
human being before me or within the boundaiies 
of this State would have resided here. What I 
understand by one idea is this : It simply means 
that a man, or a people, or a State, is in earnest. 
They get an idea which they think is useful, and 
they are in earnest. God save us when we are to 
abandon confidence in earnest men and take to 
following trivial men of light minds, confused 
and scattered ideas, and weak purposes. 

Fellow citizens, there is no such thing as gov- 
ernment carried out without the intervention, 
the rising, the exaltation of one idea, and with- 
out the activity, guidance and influence of ear- 
nest men. You may be listless, indifferent, in- 
dolent each one of you ; do you therefore get 
other people to go to sleep ? No. You go to 
sleep, and you will find somebody that has got 
one idea that you don't like, who will be wide 
awake. They want to be wide awake on the 
negro question as long as it pays, and it pays 
just as long as you will be content to follow their 
guidance and take several ideas 

Fellow citizens, industry is the result of one 
idea. I have never heard of idle ones in the 
beaver's camp, but I do know there are drones 
in the beehive, Neverth'^iess, the beaver's camp 
and the beehive all give evidence of the domina- 
tion of one idea. The Almighty Power himself 
could never have made the world, and never 
govern it, if he had not bent the force and appli- 
cation of the one idea to make it perfect. And 
when at 7 o'clock in the morning, three months 
ago, with the almanac in my hand, I stood with 
my smoked glass between me and the sun to see 
whether the almanac maker was correct or whe- 
ther nature vascillated between one idea and an- 
other, I was astonished to see that, at the very 
second of time indicated by the astronomer, the 
shadow of the moon entered the disk of the sun. 
There was one idea only in the mind of the Om- 
nipotent Creator that, six thousand, or ten thou- 
sand, or twenty thousand, or hundreds of thou- 
sands of years ago, set that sun, that moon, and 
this earth in their places, and subjected them to 
laws which brought that shadow exactly at this 
point at that instant of time. Earth is serious ; 
heaven is serious ; earth is earnest ; heaven is 
earnest. There is no place for men of scattered 
and confused ideas in the earth below, or in the 
heavens above, whatever there may be in places 
under the earth. 

Every one idea has its negative. It has its des- 
tinies, its purpose, and it has its negative. So it 
is with the idea of slavery ; it means nothing 
less, nothing more, nothing different from the 
extension of commerce or ti-ading in slaves ; and 
in onr national system It means the extension of 
commerce in slaves into regions where that com- 
merce has no right to exist. The negative of 
that is our right wlrich we are endeavoiing to in- 
culcate in your minds, opposition to trading in 
slaves within those portions of the Territoiy 
where slaves are not lawfully a subject of mer- 
chandise. 

At the time of the compromise of 1820 the. 
Democratic party saw, for they are wise men, and 
their opponents, Rufus King, John W. Taviov 
and others in Congress, saw, thut tli.;rc wud 



21 



an irrepressible conflict between the two ideas of 
slavery and freedom, or rather between the two 
sides of one idea. The alternative offered to the 
Democracy and to all the people of the United 
States, was a plain one; the slaveholders are 
stiono;, are united; there are many slave States 
and tiiey are agreed in their policy; there are as 
many free States, but they are divided in opinion. 
Lend your su[)port to the slave States and you 
shall have the power, patronage, honors and 
glory of administering the goverument of the 
United States. Some asked, for how long! Wise 
men cast the horoscope and said forty years ; 
just about that time an infant State shall grow 
up north of Missouri within the Louisiana pur- 
chase, and another shall grow up in Kansas. 
These forty years the great men I have named 
seemed few and feeble in numbers; still they 
would rather liave quiet consciences during all 
the time and postpone honors and rewards for 
forty years, rather than to take the side of slavery ; 
and the Democratic party reasoning otherwise, 
said, " Give us the offices and power now ; we 
will hold it the forty years and more if we 
can." 

They say that the " old one " is inexorable ; 
that when he makes a bond he lives up to it, but 
when the time is up he calls for his own. To 
Mr. Breckim-idge, Mr. Douglas, slave States and 
all, he says: "I have given you all the rope 
that was allowed me to give you, now you must 
go." 

Tliis, my young friends, for I see many such 
around me, brings me to a point where I can 
give you one instruction which, if you practice 
as long as you live, may make at least some of 
you great men, honorable men, useful men. Re- 
member that all questions have two sides ; one is 
the right side, and the other the wrong side; one 
is tl)e side of justice, the other that of injustice; 
on-e the side of human nature, tlie other of crime. 
If you take the right side, the just side, ulti- 
mately men, however much they may oppose 
you and revile you, will come to your support; 
earth with all its powers will work with you and 
for you, and Heaven is pledged to conduct you 
to complete success. If you take the other side, 
there is no power in earth or heaven that can lead 
you through successfully, becatise it is appointed 
in the councils of heaven that justice, truth and 
reason alone can prevail. This instruction would 
be incomplete if I were not to add one other, 
that indifference between right and wrong is 
nothing else than taking the wrong side. The 
policy of a great leader of the Democratic party 
in the North is indifference ; it is nothing to him 
whether slavery is voted up or voted down in 
the Teri-itories. Thus it makes no difference to 
that distinguished statesman whether slavery is 
voted up or voted down in the new States; 
whether they all become slave States or free 
States. 

Let us see how this would have worked in the 
revolution. If Jefferson had been indifferent as 
to whether Congress voted up the Declai-ation of 
Independence or voted it down, what kind of a 
time would they have had with it. Patrick 
Hem-y would have been after him with a vigi- 
lance committee, and he would have no morm- 
ment over his remains. The British Government 
would have liked nothing better than a lot of 
such indifferent men for leaders of the American 
people, and George the Third and his dynasty 



might have had rule over this continent for a 
thousand years to come. 

I have thus removed the preliminary objection 
always interposed on these occasions against 
the indulgence of the eternal negro question. 
What is the just and right national policy with 
regard to slavery in the territories and in the 
new States of the Federal Union 1 and your de- 
cision of that subject will involve the considera- 
tion of what you consider to be the natural con- 
stituents of a state. 

I suppose I may infer from your choosing this 
beautiful land on the western bank of the Mis- 
sissippi that you all want to make Iowa a great 
and good state, a flourishing and prosperous state. 
You consider the development of the latent re- 
sources with which nature has supplied the re- 
gion on which you build a state, as one of the 
material things to be considered in building up 
a great state ; that is to say, you will have the 
forests subjugated and make them contribute the 
timber and lumber for the house, for the city, 
for the wharf, for the steamer, for the ship of 
war, and for all the purposes of civilized society. 
Then I think you will consider that if the land 
has concealed within it, deposits of iron, or lead, 
or coal, you will think of getting this out as 
rapidly as you can, so as to increase the public 
wealth. Then I think that you will have the 
same idea about states everywhere else that you 
have about Iowa; and that your first idea about 
the way to make a state corresponds with my 
idea to make a great nation. And as you would 
subdue the forests, would develop the lead, iron 
and coal in your region ; as you would improve 
the fields, putting ten oxen to a plow to turn up 
the prairie, and then plant it with wheat and 
corn; as you would encourage manufactures, 
and try, by making railways and telegrnphs, to 
facilitate interchange of products ; it is exactly 
this I propose to do for every new state like 
low^n, that is to be admitted into the Federal 
Union. To be sure we shall leave the slave 
states, which are all in the Union, as they are ; 
our responsibilities are limited to the states 
which are yet to come into the Union, and we 
will apply our system to them. The first ques- 
tion, then, in making a state, is to favor the in- 
dustry of the peoi)ie, and industry is favored 
in every land exactly as it is free and uncrip- 
pled. 

We are a great nation ; we have illimitable for- 
ests in tlie far East and on the banks of the up- 
per waters of the Mississippi, around the lakes 
and on the Pacific coast. No human arithmetic 
could compute the amount of materials of the 
forest that have gone into the aggregate of the 
wealth which this nation possesses. At this day 
there is not one foot of timber, not -one foot of 
dealboards, not a lath, not a shingle, entering in- 
to the commerce of the United Stales that is fab- 
ricated by a slave. 

You all have an idea, or had in the land from 
which you came here, of the value and import- 
ance of the fisheries, of making the ocean sur- 
render its treasures to increase the national 
wealth. The fisherman is seen in the winter time 
fishing for ice in the ponds and lakes of Massa- 
chusetts ; and if you go to Palestine or to Grand 
Cairo or to the furthest Indies, you will find your- 
self regaled with ice fished out of the lakes and 
ponds of Massachusetts. But ice is not a pro- 
duct that goes far to the support of human life;: 



22 



but can you tell me what portions of the earth 
are liglited on their way by night, at home in 
their cities, by the produce of tlieir fisheries ? 
Have you any idea of how much the great ma- 
chinery of the country engaged in fabrication of 
goods and in navigation is indebted to the fisher- 
ies ? Those of tlie United States are a great source 
of national wealth; and a nursery of seamen for 
the commercial marine and naval service of the 
United >States, indispensable for the development 
of the i-esources of a great people. There is not 
now and there never was a lake or river, sea or 
bay, over the whole world, from the Arctic to the 
Antarctic pole, a negro' slave fisherman. 

You have been very indifierent about these 
subjects ; you have not taken notice of that. It 
Avas only two years ago, only by constant watch- 
fulness and activity of the friendly representa- 
tives of the free States in Congress, that the 
whole protection of the United States was not 
withdrawn from the fisheries. The slaveholders 
don't want ice to be gathered with free soil 
hands ; they would rather have it taken from 
the lakes and rivers of Russia. They don't want 
the fisheries conducted by free hands ; they 
would rather take their supplies from foreign 
markets. The fisheries are somewhat foreign for 
you, but the quarries are not — the granite and 
the marble out of which our capitol is being con- 
structed, our great cities erected, some of it in 
your own beautiful city. Have you any idea of 
how largo a portion of the national wealth is ex- 
tracted from the quarries of granite and marble, 
and freestone '? It is beyond any arithmetic to 
compute. Yet there is not a slave engaged in a 
quarry in the United States. Have you any 
slaves down your shafts in your lead mine here 1 
Not one. Have you any slaves in your coal 
mines 1 Not one. Any in your iron mines 1 
Not one. Pennsylvania is being burrowed all 
through and through in all directions, and the 
iron and coal taken out and fabricated. There is 
not a single slave, nor was there ever one, that 
raised his hand to add to that supply of national 
wealth. On the other hand, you have in Mary- 
land and in Virginia deposits of coal and iron, as 
rich, aye, and of gold, too ; and yet in Maryland 
and Virginia, in their iron, coal, and silver mines, 
the work is mainly done by freemen. 

I need not speak of manufactures ; the Afri- 
can slave is reduced to a brute, as nearly as may 
be, and he is incompetent to- weave, to cast a 
shuttle, to turn a wheel, to grease or oil a wheel 
and keep it in motion. In all th.e vast manufac- 
turing establishments in the United States ; in 
all the establishments of the forests and of the 
fisheries, or of manufactures throughout the 
whole world, there is not one African slave to be 
found. California rejected the labor of slaves, 
and well she did so; for if she had invited and 
courted it, her mines, instead of yielding fifty 
millions of gold per year to the commerce of the 
United States would be yielding nothing. 

Could a man subsist in Iowa by cultivating 
wheat or corn with slave labor 1 If not, they tell 
us this is a question altogether of economy, and 
that men have no idea of justice. No man has 
ever brought or ever thinks of bringing an 
African slave here ; the reason is a moral one ; 
that slave labor don't pay, and only free labor 
will. 

Commerce is of two kinds, domestic and for- 
eign. The commerce down the Mississippi and 



up, commerce across the railroads with New 
York, is domestic commerce ; the conmierce 
across the ocean with foreign nations, is the for- 
eisn commerce. In New Orleans I found that 
sixteen thousand men were engaged in domestic 
trading on the river between New Orleans and 
the up country in the Mississippi valley. How 
many of them were slaves 1 Not one. Ohio, In- 
diana, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, New York, 
Michigan, send the boatmen who conduct the 
commerce even in slave States, while on all the 
y0^eans there is not a slave engaged in commeice. 

Now the three great wheels of national wealth 
are agriculture, including the subjugation of tlie 
forests, manufactures and trade. Slaves are uir^ 
fit, African slaves are absolutely unfit to be em- 
l)loyed in turning either of those wheels ; and it 
thus enters into the elements of a great and pros- 
perous state that its people shall not be slaves 
but freemen. — •' 

The reason is obvious ; it is the interest of the 
freemian to cultivate himself as well as he can, to 
produce the most he can, at the least cost ; and 
it is the interest of the slave to be as disqualified 
as he can, to consume as much as he can, and 
produce as little more than he consumes as pos- 
sible. 

It is not wealth alone that makes a nation. It 
must have strength and power to command, by 
the mere signification of its will, peace and good 
order at home and respect and confidence abroad. 
Just imagine the United States converted into 
planting States in Avhich the labor was performed 
only by negro slaves, and judge, if you can, what 
: would be the police power of the goveinment in 
iany of the States. The laborer in a slave State 
'is watched night and morning ; his outgoings, his 
incomings, his path is surrounded by a police ; 
he can pass to execute the order of his master 
only on a permit or license. Why, he must re- 
tire to sleep at nine or ten at night, and must not 
bo abroad from the plantation without a special 
license, for no other reason than, being held in 
involuntary bondage, his master regards him as 
an enemy to be watched. 

Turn a whole nation into masters watching 
slaves, and slaves regarded as natural enemies — 
what is the power of that nation to preserve 
peace at home ? What its power to command 
respect abroad 1 Make us for once a nation of 
slave States, and any feeble, worthless power in 
Europe has only to apply the torch of insurrec- 
tion and civil war by proposing to emancipate 
our slaves ; instead of relying on ourselves we 
would want to make a federal union with Cana- 
da, that we might get protection, just as the free 
States now protect the slave States. 

But all these — material wealth and power — are 
but low ideas of what constitute a nation. It 
should have a head, an enlightened head ; an 
open, free, manly, honest heart. Such will ena- 
ble any man or woman to go through the Avorld 
with safety. A nation is only an aggregate of 
individuals, of so many heads to work as one 
head; of so many hearts to work as one heart. 
You want an enlightened free people to consti- 
tute a nation ; and if you have such a people, 
they are perpetually reducing the labor, the sac- 
rifice, and toil of muscle; and if it be true, as 
theologians say, that labor is the ])rimal curse 
imposed by the Maker on man for disobedience, 
then this benevolent heart and enlightened head 
will suggest all manner of machines to relieve 



23 



them of the necessity of so much labor. The 
poor widow, who, to eke out a subsistence, has 
to sew for her neighbors, will, with a machine 
that costs but from fifty to one hundred dollars 
— the invention of a free people — make fifty gar- 
ments wl.ierc before she made but one. And the 
steam engine — it plows, plants, sows and har- 
vests ; it threshes, it gathers into the granaries ; 
it hauls the cars loaded with produce ; it drives 
the steamboat on the river. That is what inven- 
tion does. Now, out of the million inventions 
which the American people enjoy, there is not 
one that was made by a slave, and simply be- 
cause the slave is imbruted in his heart and stu- 
pified in his intellect. 

A nation to be great wants character — charac- 
ter for justice, honesty, integrity ; for ability to 
maintain its own rights and respect for the rights 
of others. That it cannot have, if it be a nation 
of slaves. It is only a nation of freemen that 
can cultivate the virtues which constitute a char- 
acter. These virtues are two : Justice, equal 
and exact justice among men ; the equal freedom 
and liberty of every other man. The other vir- 
tue is courage. The freeman has no enemies ; 
he is just ; he oppresses nobody ; nobody wishes 
to be revenged upon him. A nation of freemen 
are safe ; they provoke nobody ; they wrong 
nobody ; they covet nothing ; they keep the 
tenth commandment. And nations must keep 
the commandments as well as individuals, or 
suffer the same penalty. 

But you cannot have these virtues except on 
one condition, and that is that the people of the 
nation are traip.ed up in them. And how train- 
ed"? By schools and general instruction, free 
press, free debate at home, and in legislative 
councils ; and everywhere to be undisturbed as 
they go in and come out. Introduce slavery in 
Iowa, and what kind of freedom of speech would 
you enjoy ? What kind of freedom of the press ? 
freedom of bridges 1 of taverns 1 Just look 
across the State of Missouri into Kansas, and 
you will find freedom of the press, provided you 
will maintain that property is above labor, that 
slavery is before all constitutions and govern- 
ments — that freedom of speech which sought the 
expulsion of John Quincy Adams from the Con- 
gress of the United States, for presenting a peti- 
tion in favor of human rights ; the freedom of 
debate which arrested my distinguished and 
esteemed friend, Charles Sumner, in the midst of 
a glorious and useful career, and doomed him to 
wander a sufferer and invalid for four yeais. As 
for freedom of bridges, why the bridge over the 
Missouri at Kansas was proved to be only a 
bridge for slave State men; and the tavern at 
Lawrence was subverted for a nuisance on ac- 
count of its being a tavern at which free State 
men could stop. 

It is a bright September afternoon, and a 
strange feeling of surprise comes over me that 
I should be here in the State of Iowa — the State 
redeemed and saved in the compromise of 1820 — 
a State peopled by freemen — that I should be 
here in such a State, before such a people, im- 
ploring the citizens of Iowa to maintain the 
cause of Freedom instead of the cause of Slavery. 
It is a strange change from the position I Avas in 
only a year ago. In Italy, in Austria, in Turkey 
even, I was excusing, in the best way I could, 
the monstrous delinquencies of the American 
people in tolerating slavery,, which even the 



Turk had abrogated. You tell me that it is 
unnecessary ; that you are all rigbt; I happen to 
know better. That courtesy which I appreciate, 
suavity which I acknowledge, restricts some, 
many in this assembly from interrupting these 
remarks (though they are intended to be dis- 
respectful to nobody) as I have often been inter- 
rupted, with shouts of — "Hurrah for Douglas;" 
and yet, if I am right in what I have said, the 
Wide-Awakes are not up an hour too soon ; they 
do not sit up any too late o' nights ; their zeal is 
not a bit too strong to save the State of Iowa 
from giving her votes, in the present canvass, for 
a continuance of that administration which has 
for forty years, made slavery the cardinal insti- 
tution, and freedom secondary to it in the Uni- 
ted States. There is something of excuse and 
apology for this ; it is in the reluctance which 
men who are always opposed to one new idea 
coming in. have to give up the old idea, which 
they have so long cherished. The Democratic 
party has a wonderful affection for the name ; 
the prestige of the Democratic party ; and most 
of them, fellow citizens, must die unconverted. 
It is not in human nature that adult men and 
women change their opinions with facility ; it is 
little ones like these that grow up unobserved 
and unknown. Ten thousand of their votes 
enter into every successive canvass in the State 
of Iowa. 

In every State the great reformation which 
has been made within the last six years — for we 
date no further back than that — has been the 
dying out of the one-idea men of Democracy 
and the growing up of the young one-idea men 
of Republicanism. And now why shall we not 
insist, so far as our votes shall be effective, that 
the territories shall remain free territories, so 
that new States which shall hereafter be added 
to this Union shall beFiee States. 

They say we have no right to interfere in the 
slave States ; that we attack slavery in them. 
Not at all. We do not vote against slavery in 
Virginia. We do not authorize Abraham Lin- 
coln or the Congress of the United States to pass 
any laws about slavery in Virginia. We merely 
authorize them to intervene in the Territories, 
and to pass laws securing freedom there. They 
tell us that it is unnecessary. They have rendered 
it necessary, because they have explained the 
laws and the constitution to establish slavery 
there, and we must either restrict slavery there 
or reverse the decision made by the federal tri- 
bunal. But they tell us that this is inconvenient ; 
it excites violence in the slave States. To which 
I answer that they have the choice between 
slavery and freedom as Avell as we ; but they 
must be content to leave it where it is. When 
they choose to carry slaves into the Territories 
we interfere. What we are attacking is not 
slavery in the United States, but slavery in the 
Territories. 

But they tell us that we are suffering very 
great harm ; that our Southern friends, driven 
angry, will not buy of us. Mayor Wood made 
the discovery that we are a trading people, and 
we shall lose our trade if the Republican party 
come into power. We are a trading people as 
we are an eating people, a drinking people, a 
clothes wearing people. Trade ! trade ! trade ! 
the great character, the great employment, the 
one idea of the American people ! It is a libel. 
We buy only with what we produce. We buy 



24 



and sell, but that is merely inciflental to our 
greater occupation of producing and making; 
and even these are subordinate to our great no- 
tion of educating and cultivating ourselves to 
make a great, virtuous and happy people. Trade, 
however, for those who engage in it, knows no 
respect of opinion ; the southern planters will 
buy their cotton bagging of the men who will 
make it the cheapest, and they will insist on 
selling cotton to the Castle Garden committees 
and the Cooper Institute patriots at precisely the 
same price as they will to Wendell Phillips and 
Frederick Douglas. They wont buy your wheat 
unless hungry for bread ; and if hungry for 
bread they will gladly give you for it any surplus 
of cotton you want. (Laughter.) 

Fellow citizens, I have refrained from advert- 
ing to the higher sentiments of humanity which 
enter into the consideration of this subject, be- 
cause those are considerations that are always 



with you. I will now say that the suggestions 
of justice are always in harmony with the sug- 
gestions and impulses of humanity, and that 
both spring from the same source. Nature her- 
self seems to be forbearing ; she seems to be 
passive and silent. She lets nations as she lets 
individuals go on in their course of action, vio- 
lating her laws; but this is for a season only. 
The time comes at last when Nature unerringly 
vindicates every right, and punishes eveiy wrong, 
of the actions of men or states ; and when she 
does come we are punished. She comes in ter- 
ror, in revolution, in anarchy, in chaos. You 
will let this government and this nation slide 
down still further the smooth declivity if you 
choose; nature will bring it back again in due 
time with convulsions which will wake the sighs 
and groans of the civilized world. (Loud ap- 
plause.) 



GOVERNOR SEWARFS 

T^lEMARKS ON HIS E.ECEPTIOlSr AT MADISON, 
September 11, 1860. 



The reception of Gov. Seward here was more 
imposing than at any place on the route. Three 
Military Companies, the Fire Department, the 
Turners and the Wide-Awakes, escorted him into 
the city. 

He was welcomed by the Governor and the 
Mayor. His reply was brief, and characterized 
by deep feeling. In the couise of ii, he said : 

It has been by a simple rule of interpretation 
I have studied the Constitution of my country. 
That rule has been simply this : That by no 
word, no act, no combination into which I misht 
enter, should any one human being of all the 
generations to which I belong, much less any 
class of human beings of any nation, race, or kin- 
dred, be oppressed and kei)t down in the least 
degree in their efforts to rise to a higher state of 
liberty and happiness. [Applause.] Amid all 
the gU;Sses of the times, amid all the essays and j 
discussions to which the Constitution of the Uni- 



ted States has been subjected, this has been the 
simple, plain, broad light in which I have read 
every article and every section of that great 
instrument. Whenever it requires of me that this 
hand shall keep down thehnmblest of thehuman 
race, then I will lay down power, place, position, 
fame, everything rather than adopt such a con- 
struction of such a rule. [Applause ] If, there- 
fore, in this land there are any who would rise, I 
say to them, in God's name, good speed ! If there 
are in foreign lands people who would improve 
their condition by emi2ration, or if there be any 
here who would go abroad in search of happi- 
ness, in the improvement of their condition, or in 
their elevation toward a higher state of dignity 
and hap])iness, they have always liad, and they 
always shall have, a cheering word and such 
efforts as I can consistently make in their behalf. 
[Applause.] 



Senator Seward's Western Tour. 



SPEECH 



BY 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT 



CHICA-GO, OCTOBER 3, 1860. 



Hail to the State of Illinois! whose iron roads 
form the spinal column of that system of internal 
continental trade which surpasses all the foreign 
commerce of the country, and has no parallel oi- 
imitation in any other country on the face of the 
globe. 

Hail Chicago ! the heart which supplies life to 
this great system of railroads — Chicago, the last 
and most wonderful of all the marvelous crea- 
tions of civilization in North America. 

Hail to this council chamber of the great Re- 
publican party! justly adapted by its vastness 
and its simplicity to its great purposes — the hall 
where the representatives of freemen framed that 
creed of Republican faith, which carries healing 
for the lelief of a disordered nation. Woe ! woe I 
be to him who shall add to or shall subtract one 
word from that simple, sublime, truthful, benefi- 
cent creed. 

Hail to the Representatives of the Republican 
party, chosen here by the Republicans of the 
United States, and placed upon the platform of 
that creed. Happy shall he be who shall give 
them his suffrage. If he be an old man, he shall 
show the virtue of wisdom acquired by experi- 
ence ; if he be a young man, he shall in all his com- 
ing years, tell his fellow men wirh pride, " I too 
voted for Abraham Lincoln." [Great applause.] 

Fellow citizens, that Republican creed is, ne- 
vertheless, no partisan creed. It is a National 
faith, because it is the embodiment of the one 
life-sustaining, life-expanding idea of the Ameri- 
can republic. What is tlie idea more or less than 
sim[)ly this : That civilization is to be maintained 
and carried on upon this continent by Federal 
States, based upon the principles of free soil, 
free labor, free speech, equal rights and universal 
suffrage? [Loud ay)plause.] 

Fellow citizens, this is no new idea. This idea 
had its first utterance, and the boldest and clear- 



est of all the utterances it has ever received, in 
the very few M'ords that were spoken by this na- 
tion when it came before the woild, took its 
place upon the stage of human action, and as- 
serting its independence in the fear of God, and 
in full confidence of the approval of mankind; 
declared that henceforth it held those to be its 
enemies, who should oppose it in war, and those 
to be its friends who should maintain with it re- 
lations of peace. That utterance was expressed 
in these simple words : " We hold these truths to 
be self-evident — that all men are created equal, 
and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and 
the pursuit of happiness." This great national 
idea has been working out its fruits ever since. 
Its work is seen in the perfect acceptance of it 
by eighteen of the thirty-four States of the Union 
— or seventeen of the thirty-three, if Kansas is to 
be considered out. It is asserting itself in the 
establishment of new States throughout the 
West, as it has revolutionized and is revolution- 
izing all of Western and Southern Europe. Why 
is this idea so effective'? It is because it is 
the one chief, living, burning, inextinguishable 
thought of human nature itself, entertained by 
man in every age and in every clime. 

Fellow citizens, this national idea works not 
unopposed. Every good and virtuous and bene- 
volent principle in nature has its antagonist, and 
this great national idea works in perpetual o{)po- 
sition — I may be allowed to say in irrepressible 
conflict — [Prolonged applause] — with an errone- 
ous, a deceitful, a delusive idea. Do you ask 
what that delusive idea is 1 It is the idea that 
civilization ought and can be effected on this con- 
tinent, through this form of federal States, based 
on the principle of slave labor — of Africar. slave 
labor, of unequal rights and unequal representa- 
tion, resulting in unequal suffrage. 

[Here there was much tumult and confusion, 



26 



owing to efforts of those beyond the reach of his 
voice to liear, drowning the speaker's voice.] 

Fellow citizens : Can it be that this great creed 
of ours needs exposition or defense 1 It seems 
to me so evidently just and true that it requires 
no exposition and needs no defense. Certainly 
in foreign countries it needs none. In Scotland, 
or France, or Germany, or Russia, on the shores 
of the Mediterranean, in Europe, or in Asia, or 
in Africa, you will never find one human being 
who denies the truth and the justice of this na- 
tional idea of the equality of man. 

[Here the tumult became so great that the 
speaker was compelled to pause. Mr. Arnold 
coming forward, urged upon all to be as quiet as 
possible. Those who were out of reach of Mr. 
Seward's voice, and desired to hear other speak- 
ers, could do so at the various stands and at the 
Wigwam. He thought it must be very painful to 
the distioquished speaker to witness such a dis- 
turbance.] 

Gov. Seward: Fellow citizens, do not sup- 
pose that this disturbance, which I know is in- 
voluntary on your part, gives me any pain what- 
ever, [Applause.] There is no pressure here 
which an honest man need regret. I only regret 
that I have not voice enough to reach the whole 
of this vast assembly, or even the twentieth part 
of it. 1 will proceed, trusting that something I 
may say will reach the ears of most of the assem- 
blage. As necessarily I must change my position 
as I speak to make you hear me, addressing first 
this side and then that, no one will, I fear, be 
able to preserve the connection of my remarks, 
except my self— and he is a very fortunate speaker 
who does that, [Laughter.] 

I was speaking of this national idea — that it 
needs no exposition anywhere. It is one of those 
propositions that when addressed to thoughtful 
men needs no explanation or defense. And why 
notl 

Here we can see for ourselves this mean and 
miserable rivulet of black African slavery, steal- 
ing along turbid and muddy as it is drawn from 
its stagnant source in the slave States ; Ave 
see that it is pestilential in the atmosphere it 
passes through ; we can see how inadequate it 
is and unfit to irrigate a whole continent with 
the living waters of health and life ; we can see 
how it is that everything on its i3anks Avith- 
ers and droops; while on the other hand, we 
can also see this broad flood of free labor as it 
descends the mountain sides in torrents, and is 
gathered in rivers, increasing in volume and 
power, and spreading itself all abroad. We can 
well see by the effects it has already produced, 
how it irrigates and must continue to irrigate 
this whole continent ; how every good and vir- 
tuous plant lives and breathes by its support. 
We see the magical fertility which results from 
its presence, because it is around us and before 
us always. 

We sometimes, fellow citizens, hear an argu- 
ment for a political proposition made in this 
form: One offers to "take a thing to be done 
by the job."' Let us imagine for a moment that 
there could be one man bold enough, great 
enough, and wise enough to take " by the job " 
the work of establishing civilization over this 
broad continent of North America. He would, 
of course, want to do it in the shortest time, at 
the cheapest expense, and in the best manner. 
Now, would such a man ever dream of im- 



porting African barbarians; or of taking their 
children or descendants in this country to build 
up and people great Free States all over this 
land, from the Alleghany Mountains to the Pa- 
cific Ocean 1 Would he not, on the contrary, 
accept, as the rightful, natural, healthful, and 
best possible agency which he could select, the 
free labor of free men, the minds, the thoughts, 
the wills, the purposes, the ambitions of enlight- 
ened freemen, such as we claim ourselves to be^ 
would he not receive all who claim to aid in 
such services as these whether they were born 
on this soil, or cradled in foreign lands ? 

I care not, fellow citizens, when reckless men 
say in the heat of debate, or under the infiuence 
of interest, passion or prejudice, that it is a mat- 
ter of indifference whether slavery shall per- 
vade the whole land, or a part of the land, and 
freedom the residue — that freedom and slavery 
may take their chances — that they " don't care 
whether slavery is voted up or down." There 
is no man who has an enlightened conscience 
who is indifierent on the subject of himian bond- 
age. [Applause.] There is no man who is en- 
lightened and honest, Avho would not abate some 
considerable part of his worldly wealth, if he 
could thereby convert this land from a land 
cursed in whole or in part with slavery, into a 
land of equal and impartial liberty [cheers] ; 
and I will tell you how I know this : I know it, 
because every man demands freedom for him- 
self, and refuses to be a slave. No free man, 
who is a man, would consent to be a slave ; every 
slave who has any manhood in him, desires to be 
free ; no man who has an unperverted reason 
does not lament, condemn and deplore the prac- 
tice of commerce in man. The executioner is 
always odious, even though his task is neces- 
sary to the administration of justice. We turn 
with horror and disgust from him who wields 
the axe. So the slaveholder turns with disgust 
from the auctioneer Avho sells the man and wo- 
man whom he has reared and held in slavery, 
although he receives the profits of the sale into 
his own coffers. 

I know this national idea of ours is just and 
right for another reason ; it is that in the whole 
history of society, human nature has never, 
never honored one man who reduced another man 
to bondage. The world is full of monuments in 
honor of men who have delivered their fellow 
men from slavery. 

Since this idea is self-cvidently just, and is of 
itself pure, peaceable, easy to be entieated and 
full of good works, will you tell me why it is 
that it has not been fully accepted by the Ameri- 
can people 1 Alas ! that it should be so. Per- 
haps I can throw light on that by asking another 
question : Is not Christianity pure, jieaceable, 
gentle, easy to be entreated, and full of good 
works 1 and yet is not the church of Jesus 
Christ still a church militant 7 Alas ! that it 
should be so. Christianity explains for herself 
liovv^ it is that she is rejected of men. She says 
it is because men love darkness latherthan light, 
because their deeds are evil, I shall not say this 
in regard to the subject of freedom. I know 
better; I know that my countrymen love light — 
not darkness. They are even in the state and 
disposition of the Roman Governor, " almost 
thou persuadest me to be a Christian," and al- 
most the American ])e<)[)le are persuaded to be 
Republican. [Cheers and laughter.] Why, then 



27 



are they not altogether persuaded ? The answer 
cannot be given without some reflection. It in- 
volves an examination of our national conduct 
and life. 

The reason why the country is only almost and 
not altogether persuaded to be Republican, is be- 
cause the national sense and judgment have been 
perverted. We inherited slavery ; it is organized 
into our national life — into our forms of govern- 
ment. It exists among us, unsuspected in its 
evils, because we have become accustomed, 
through national habit, to endure and tolerate 
slavery. The effect of this habit arising from 
the presence of slaver)', is to produce a want of 
moral courage among the people and an indispo- 
sition to entertain and examine the subject. It 
is not, however, the fault of the people. This 
lack of moral courage is chiefly the fault of the 
political representatives of the people. In every 
district in the United States, and for every seat 
in Congress, the people might select men appa- 
rently as brave, as truthful, as fearless and as 
firm as Owen Lovejoy. [Applause.] 

You may fill the halls of Congress with men 
from all the Free States who seem to be as relia- 
ble as Owen Lovejoy ; but on the clangor of the 
slavery bugle in the'hall they begin to waver and 
fail. They retire. They suffer themselves to be 
demoralized ; and they return to demoralize the 
people. Slavery never hesitates to raise the 
clangor of "the trumpets to terrify the timid. 

Slavery has, too, another argument for the 
timid than terror; it is power. The concentra- 
tion of Slavery gives it a fearful political power. 
You know how long it has been the controlling 
power in the Executive Department of the Gov- 
ernment. Slavery uses that power, as might be 
expected — to punish those who oppose it, to re- 
ward those who serve it. All repiesentatives 
are naturally ambitious ; all representatives like 
fame ; if they do not like pecuniary rewards, 
they like the distinctions of place. They like to 
be popular. When the people are demoralized, 
he who is constant becomes oflTensive and obnox- 
ious; he loses position and the party chooses 
some other representative who will be less obnox- 
ious. These demoralized representatives incul- 
cate among the people pernicious lessons and sus- 
tain themselves by adopting compromises. They 
compromise so far, if possible, as to save place 
and a show of principle ; they save themselves 
first, and let freedom take what remains. 

A community thus demoralized by its repre- 
sentatives is fearful of considering the subject 
of Slavery at all. It does not like to look back 
upon its record ; it does not dare to look forward 
to see what are to be the consequences of errors. 
It desires peace and quiet. We shall see in a 
moment what fearful sacrifices have beeen made 
under the influence of this demoralization by the 
power of the government. 

The first act of demoralization was to surren- 
der the Territory of Arkansas and the Territory 
of Missouri to slavery, and also by implication 
all the rest of the Territory of Louisiana ac- 
quired by purchase from France, that lay south 
of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north lati- 
tude. Take up your maps when you go home, 
and see what a broad belt of country, lying 
south of that line, was surrendered, with' the 
States of Missouri and Arkansas, to slavery, 
Next, under the infiuence of this same demo- 
ralization, the whole of the peninsula of Florida, 



acquired from Spain, was surrendered to sla- 
very, rendering it practically useless for all the 
national purposes for which it was acquired, 
making it a burden instead of a blessing, a dan- 
ger instead of a national safeguard in the Gulf 
of Mexico. 

Then Texas was surrendered to slavery and 
brought in with the gratuitous agreement that 
four slave States should be made out of that 
Territory. Next, in 1850, Utah and New Mexico 
were abandoned to slavery. After these events, 
following in quick succession, came the abroga- 
tion, in the year 1854, of the restriction con- 
tained in the Missouri Compromise, by which it 
had been stipulated that all north of thirty-six 
degrees thirty minutes, excepting the State of 
Missouri, should be dedicated to freedom. That 
was abandoned to slavery to take it if she could 
get it; and the administration of the govern- 
ment of the United States, with scarcely a pro- 
test from the people, went on to favor its occu- 
pancy by Slavery. As a legitimate consequence 
came the refusal, on the part of the national 
government — for it was a practical refusal — to 
admit Kansas into the Union because she would 
not accept slavery. 

After this demoralization had been carried out 
in these measures, what right had the nation to 
be surprised when the President and the Su- 
preme Court at last pronounced that which in 
no previous year either of them would have 
dared to assert — that this Constitution of ours is 
not a Constitution of Liberty, but that it is a 
Constitution of human bondage ; that slavery is 
the normal condition of the American people on 
each acre of the domain of the United States not 
organized into States — that is to say, that wher- 
ever this banner of ours, this star spangled ban- 
ner, whose glories we celebrate so highly — wher- 
ever this banner floats over a national ship or a 
national Territory, there is a land, not of freedom, 
but of slavery ! 

Hence it has followed, that the nation up to 
1854 surrendered all the unoccupied portions of 
this continent to Slavery, and thereby practically 
excluded freemen — because experience shows 
that when you have made a slave Territory, free- 
dom avoids it ; just as much as when you make 
a fiee State, like Kansas, slavery disappears 
from it 

I have said that the country was demoralized 
by its political representatives ; but these politi- 
cal representatives have their agents. All men 
necessarily fall into some political party, and 
into some political parties and religious sects. 
To gain office in a political party and share its 
favors, when the nation was demoralized, it be- 
came necessary that the candidate should be 
tolerant of slavery. So religious sects were am- 
bitious to extend their ecclesiastical sway. The 
consequence was that year by year slavery had 
party upon party ; slavery had religious sect upon 
religious sect ; church after church. But alas ! 
until the dawn of that year freedom had no 
party and no religious sect throughout this whole 
country. 

A people who are demoralized are easily ope- 
rated upon ; they are easily kept persistently in 
the same erroneous habit which has demoralized 
them. The first agency for continunig to extend 
the power of slavery upon this continent, is that 
of alarm. Fears of all kinds are awakened in 
the public mind. The chief of them is the fear 



28 



of turbulence, of disorder, of civil commotions, 
and of civil war. The slaveholders in the Slave 
States very justly, and truthfully, and rightfully 
assume that slaves are the natural enemies of 
their masters; and, of course, that slaves are 
insidious enemies of the State which holds them, 
or requires them to be held in bondage ; that in- 
sidious enemies are dangerous ; and, therefore, 
in every Slave State that has ever been founded 
in this country, a policy is established which 
suppresses freedom of speech and freedom of 
debate, so far as liberty needs advocates, while 
it extends the largest license of debate to those 
who advocate the interests of Slavery. This 
lack of freedom of speech and freedom of debate 
is followed in Slave States by the necessary con- 
sequence, that there is no freedom of suffrage. 
So that at the last Presidential election — the first 
when this question was ever distinctly brought 
before the American people — there were no Slave 
States in which a ballot-box was open for free- 
dom, or wherein free men might cast their ballots 
with safety. If one side only is allowed to vote 
in a State, it is very easy to see that that side 
must prevail. [Laughter and applause.] 

If the condition of civil society is such that 
voting is not to be done safely, few men will vote. 
Every man who wishes to express his choice is 
not expected to be a martyr. The world produces 
but few men willing to be martyrs, my fiiends, 
and I am sorry to say they have not been very 
numerous in our day. Nearly one-half of the 
United States, then — that is, ail the Slave States, 
are at once to be arrayed on the side of slavery ; 
and behold then ! they tell us that Republican- 
ism, which invites them to discuss the subject, is 
sectional, and they are national. But the Slave 
States are not willing to rest content with this 
exclusion of all freedom of suffrage, of speech 
and of debate on the subject of Slavery witliin 
their own jurisdiction, but they require the fiee 
States to accept the same system for themselves. 
They insist that although they may be able at 
home to keep down their slaves, if we will be 
quiet, yet they cannot tolerate a discussion of 
Slavery in the Free States, as we theieby encou- 
rage the slaves in the Slave States to insurrec- 
tion and sedition. This argument might fail to 
reach and convince us, inasmuch as we, ourselves, 
are safe from any danger of insurrection in the 
Slave States. 

But they bring it home to our fears by declar- 
ing that their peace is of more importance than 
the interest of the nation ; that they prefer Sla- 
very even to Union ; that if we will not acquiesce 
in allowing them to maintain, fortify and extend 
Slavery on equal terms, then they will dissolve 
the Union, and we will all go down together, or 
we will all sufler a common desolation. There 
are few men — and there ought to be few — who 
would be so intent on the subject of establishing 
Freedom that they would consent to a subver- 
sion of the Union to produce it, because the 
Union is a positive benefit, nay, an absolute ne- 
cessity, and to save the Union, men may natu- 
rally dare to delay. Most men, therefore, very 
cheerfully prefer to let the suljject of Slavery 
rest for some better time — for some better occa- 
sion — for some more foitunate circumstances, 
and they are content to keep the Union with 
Slavery if it cannot be kept otherwise. 

You see how this has worked in demoralizing 
the American people. Less than thirty years 



ago the Governor of Massachusetts— that j5rst 
and freest of the States — actually recommended 
the Legislature to pass laws which would declare 
that the meetings of citizens held to discuss the 
subject of Slavery should be deemed seditious, 
and should be dissolved by the police ! The 
Governor of the State of New York, who prece- 
ded me in that high office, during his adminis- 
tration, and within your own lifetime and mine, 
actually made the same recommendation to the 
Legislature of that State. What was recom- 
mended, but not carried out in those States by 
law, became a custom and practice ; for, as you 
know, when the laws did not dissolve the public 
assembly, there was a period of near twenty 
years in which no public meeting of men opposed 
to the extension or aggrandizement of Slavery, 
could be held without being dispersed by the 
mob, acting in concert with the general opinion 
of the country. 

When the people of the Free States were thus 
demoralized, what wonder is it, that for twelve 
years all debates on the subject of slavery or the 
presentation of the subject by the people even 
in the form of a petition, was repressed and 
trampled under foot, and remained there until 
John Quincy Adams at last rallied a party around 
him, strong enough to restore freedom of debate 
in the House of Representatives! What wonder 
is it that within the last year, in the very face of 
the organization, and the onward march of the 
Republican party, the administration of the Fede- 
ral Government has actually, by its officers, ap- 
pointed in compliance with the dictation of the 
slaveholders, abandoned the Federal mails to the 
inspection and surveillance of the magistrates of 
the slave States ; so that they may abstract and 
commit to the flames every word that any man 
may speak, however eloquent, able, truthful or 
moderate, in the Halls of Congress against slavery 
and in favor of freedom. 

This, fellow citizens, is your Government. 
This is the condition in which you are placed. I 
am sorry to say — but I like to be truthful — that 
I have no especial compliments for you of the 
State of Illinois, on this subject; for in this 
long catalogue of extraordinary concessions to 
slavery, under the impulse of fear, I think the 
very first protest that ever came from the State 
of Illinois was as late as the year 1855; after 
all these atrocious concessions had been made, 
and we were brought to the necessity of going 
back and undoing mischief that had been done. 
You sent two senators to Congress ; you insisted 
upon extending the Wilmot Proviso over the 
territory acquired from Spain. How did tliey 
do it 1 They voted for the Wilmot Proviso under 
your instructions, and they voted against it with- 
out instructions when it came to the piacti- 
cal test. I think you made no protest until Mr. 
Douglas demanded one single and last conces- 
sion "for the purpose," as he said, " of exclud- 
ing the whole subject from Congress." That 
was the abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, 
containing the restrictions for the protection of 
fieedom in the Territories of Kansas and Ne- 
braska. Then you sent a noble re{)resentative 
to the Senaie in the person of Judge Trumbull. 
[Loud and prolonged applause.] 

A voice — "We'll send him again." 

Yes, send him again. 

" We will ;" " we will." 

I marveled when I rose here before you to 



29 



day and saw this immense assemblage, which no 
edifice but only the streets of Chicago could hold. 
[Cheers and laughter], and I wondered how it 
would have been had I come here in 1850, or 
even down at any later day before the abroga- 
tion of the Missouri Compromise. 

But, fellow-citizens, let by-gones be by-gones. 
I have seen the time when I had as little courage 
and as little resolution on this subject as most of 
you. [Laughter. ] I was born into the demoral- 
ization — I was born a slaveholder, and have some 
excuse, which you have not. All these things 
were done, not because you loved slavery, but 
because you loved the Union. 

When slavery became identical in the public 
mind with the Union, how natural it was, even for 
patriotic men, to approve of, or to at least excuse 
and tolerate slavery. How odious did it become 
for men to be Free-soilers and be regarded as 
Abolitionists, when to be an Abolitionist was, in 
the estimation of mankind, to be a traitor to one's 
country. How natuially was it then to believe 
that slavery after all might not be so very bad, 
and to believe that it might be necessary and 
might be right at some time, or on some occasion 
which times and occasions were always a good 
way off from themselves ; especially, how natural 
was it, when the whole Christian Church, with 
all its sects, bent itself to the support of the 
Union, mistaking the claim of slavery for the 
cause of the Union. 

How extensive this proscription for the sake 
and in the name of Union, has been and is to 
this day, you will see at once when I tell you 
that there is not in this whole Republic, from 
one end of it to the other, a man who maintains 
that slavery shall not be extended, who can se- 
cure, at the hands of his country, any part in the 
administration of its government from a tide- 
waiter in the Custom House, or a Postmaster in 
a rural district, to a Secretary of State, a Minis- 
ter in a foreign court, or a President of the 
United States. How could you expect that a 
people, every one of whom is born with a pos- 
sible chance, and a fair expectation of being 
something — perhaps President of the United 
States — would resist the demoralization prose- 
cuted by such means ? And when it becomes a 
heresy, for which a man is deprived of position 
in an ecclesiastical sect to which he belongs, 
how could you expect that the members of the 
Christian churches would be bold enough to 
provoke the censure of the Christian world? 
Above all, our Constitution intended to give us, 
our frame of government, as we have always 
supposed, was so established, that it did give us 
a judiciary which cannot err, which must be in- 
fallible, and must not be disputed ; and when 
the Judicial authority, which has the army and 
the navy, through the direction of the Executive 
power, to execute its judgments and decrees, 
pronounces that every appeal made for freedom 
is seditious, that every syllable in defense of 
liberty is treason, and the natural sympathy we 
• feel for the oppressed is to be punished as a 
crime ; while that body is unwilling, or at least 
unable to bring to punishment one single culprit 
out of the thousand of pirates who bring away 
slaves from Africa to sell in foreign lands — how 
could you expect a simple agricultural people 
such as we are, to be so much wiser and better 
than our Presidents and Vice-Presidents, Sena- 



tors and Representatives in Congress, and even 
our Judges ? 

I have brought you down, fellow citizens, to 
the time when this demoralization was almost 
complete. How assured its ultimate success 
seemed, after the compromise of 1850, you will 
learn from a fact which I have never before men- 
tioned, but which I will now : Horace Mann, one 
of the noblest champions of freedom on this 
continent, confessed to me, after the passage of 
the slavery laws of that year, that he despaired 
of the cause of humanity. In 1854, after the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, without pro- 
ducing so much alarm as a considerable thunder 
storm would do in the nation, there was only 
one man left who hoped against the prevailing 
demoralization and who cheered and sustained 
me through it ; and that man, in his zeal to 
make his prediction just, was afterwards betrayed 
so far by his zeal that he became ultimately a 
monomaniac and suffered on the gallows. That 
was John Brown. [Sensation.] The first and 
only time I ever saw him was when he called 
upon me after the abrogation of the Missouri 
Compromise, and asked me what I thought of 
the future. I said I was saddened and disap- 
pointed. I would persevere, but it was against 
hope. He said, " Cheer up, Governor ; the peo- 
ple of Kansas will not accept slavery ; Kansas 
will never be a slave State." [Great applause.] 

I took then a deliberate survey of the broad 
field ; I considered all ; I examined and consid- 
ered all the political forces which were revealed 
to my observation. I saw that freedom in the 
future States of this continent was the necessity 
of this age, and of this country. I saw that the 
establishment of this as a Republic, conservative 
of the rights of human nature, was the cause of 
the whole world ; and I saw that the time had 
come when men, and women, and children were 
departing from their homes in the eastern States, 
and were followed or attended by men, women 
and children from the European nations — all of 
them crowded out by the pressure of population 
upon subsistence in the older parts of the world, 
and all making their way up the Hudson River, 
through the Erie Canal, along the railroads, by 
the way of the Lakes, spreading themselves in a 
mighty flood, over Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, and 
Illinois, and even to the banks of the Mississippi. 
I knew that these emigrants were planting a 
town every day, and a State every three years, 
heedless and unconcerned as they were, think- 
ing only of provision for their immediate wants, 
of shelter and lands to till in the West — I knew 
the interest they would have when they should 
get here, and that was, that they should own 
the land themselves. [Cries of " good, good," 
and applause] — that slaves should not come into 
competition with them here. [Renewed ap- 
plause. ] 

So, as they passed by me, steamboat load after 
steamboat load, and railroad train after railroad 
train, though they were the humblest and per- 
haps the least educated and least trained portion 
of the communities from which they had con^e, 
I knew that they had the instinct of interest, and 
below, and deeper than that, the bt-tter instii.ct 
of justice. [Applause.] And I said, I will tru.t 
these men ; I will trust these exile?: niv iauh 
and reliance henceforth is on the jmxi;, uot <.'!i 
the rich; on the humble, not on Ue -M:,t. 
[Applause.] Aye, and sad it was io conie j^, but 



30 



it was so. I said, henceforth. I put my trust not 
in my native countrymen, but I put it in the 
exile from foreign lauds. He has an abhorrence 
for, and he has never been accustomed to, slavery 
by habit. Here he will stay and retain these 
Territories free. [Applause.] 

I was even painfully disappointed at first, in 
seeing that the emigrants to the West, had no 
more consciousness of their interest in this ques- 
tion, when they arrived here, than they had in 
their native countries. The Irishman who had 
struggled, against oppression in his own country, 
failed me ; the German seemed at first, but, thank 
God, not long, dull, and unconscious of the duty 
that devolved upon him. This is true ; but 
nevertheless, I said that the interest and instincts 
of these people would ultimately bring them out, 
and when the States which they plant and rear 
and fortify shall apply for admission into the 
Federal Union, they will come not as slave States 
but as free States. [Applause.] I looked one 
step further. I saw how we could redeem all that 
had been lost; and redeem it, too, by appealing 
to the very passions and interests that had lost 
all. [Hear! Hear!] 

The process was easy. ' The slave States of the 
SouLh had demoralized the free States of the 
North by giving them presidencies, secretary- 
ships, foreign missions and post offices. And 
now, here in the Northwest, we will build up 
more free States than there are slave States. — 
These free States having a common interest in 
favor of freedom, equal to that of the Southern 
Slave States in favor of slavery, will offer to 
Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massa- 
chusetts and New Jersey, objects worthy their 
ambition. [Applause.] And to-day, I see the 
very realization of it all. I can give you advo- 
cates for freedom in the Northern States, as bold, 
as out-spoken, as brave, and as confident of the 
durability of the Union, as you can find for 
slavery in the Southern btates. Aye, and when 
the Southern States demoralize the free States by 
saying they will give their trade and traffic, buy 
their silks and their linens, and other trumpery, 
provided they can buy their principles in the 
sale and the bargain must be struck, I said, there 
shall be, in those new free States in the North- 
west, men who will say, we will buy your silks 
and linens, and your trumpery of every sort, we 
will even buy more, and pay you quite as well, 
provided you do not betray your principles. 
[Applause.] 

All this was simply restoring the balance of 
the Republican system, bringing in a counter 
force in favor of freedom to counteract the es- 
tablished political agencies of slavery. You 
have heard that I have said that the last Demo- 
crat is born in this nation. [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] I say so, however, with the qualifica- 
tion before used, that by Democrat I mean one 
who will maintain the Democrotic principles 
which constitute the present creed of the Demo- 
cratic party [" Hear, hear ; we understand it "] ; 
and for the reason, a very simple one, that 
slavery cannot pay any longer, and the Demo- 
crat does not work for anybody who does not 
pay. [Great applause.] I propose to pay all 
kinds of patriots, hereafter, just as they come. 
I propose to pay them fair consideration if they 
will only be true to freedom. I propose to 
gratify all their aspirations for wealth and power, 
as much as the slave states can. 



But, fellow citizens, we had no party for this 
principle. There was the trouble. Democracy 
was the natural ally of slavery in the South. 
We were either whigs, or if you please, Ameri- 
cans, some of us, and thank God I never was 
one — in the limited sense of the term. [Cries of 
"good," "good," and applause.] But the 
Whig party, or the American party, if not 
equally an ally of the Slave party, in the South, 
was, at least, a treacherous and unreliable party 
for the interests of freedom, [That's so.] Only 
one thing was wanting, that was, to dislodge 
from the Democratic party, the Whig party, and 
the Native American party, men enough to con- 
stitute a Republican party — the party of Free- 
dom, [Applause,] 

And for that we were indebted to the kindness, 
unintentional, no doubt, of your distinguished 
Senator, now a candidate for the Presidency, 
Mr, Douglas — [laughter] who in procuring the 
abrogation of the Missouri Compromise, so shat- 
tered the columns of these parties, as to dis- 
integrate them, and instantly there was the 
material, the preparation, for the onslaught. 

Still there was wanted an occasion ; and that 
occasion was given, when, in an hour of mad- 
ness, the Democratic party and Administration, 
with the sympathy, or at least the acquiescence, 
of the Old Line Whigs and the Native Ameri- 
cans, refused to allow the State of Kansas to 
exercise the perfect freedom in choosing be- 
tween liberty and slavery, which they had pro- 
mised to her, except she should exercise it for 
slavery. Then came the hour. We had then, 
fellow-citizens, the material for a party ; we had 
the occasion for a party, and the Republican 
party sprang into existence at once, full armed. 
I will never knowingly do evil that good may 
come of it ; I will never even wi?h that others 
may do evil that good may come of it ; and for 
the same reason that I know the evil to be cer- 
tain, and the good only possible or problematical. 
But no man ever rejoiced more heartily over the 
birth of his first born than I did when I saw the 
folly and madness of the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise and the rejection of Kansas, [Ap- 
plause.] These acts, I said to myself, are the 
doings of Presidents, of Senators, of Judges, of 
Priests and of Deacons ; and when the Republi- 
can party organized itself, I said now is the work 
complete. [Good! Good!] 

How much I have been cheered in this long 
contest, by seeing that only stolen, surreptitious 
advantages were gained by slavery in the form 
of rescripts and edicts, and laws on the statute 
book ; while the cause of freedom brought in 
first, California; next. New Mexico, with her 
constitution claiming freedom; next, Kansas; 
next, Minnesota, and next Oregon ; you may all 
know, if you possibly remember, the song of jr>y, 
not so poetic, but as full of truth and happiness, 
as the song of Miriam, which I then uttered, 
declaring that that was the end, and the victory 
was won. [Loud applause,] The battle is 
ended and the victory is ours. Why then, say 
they, why not withdraw from the field ? For 
the simple reason that if the victor retire from 
the field, the vanquished will then come back, 
and the battle will not be won. Why should 
the victor withdraw, and surrender all his con- 
quests to the conquered enemy ? Why should 
he place the enemy back upon the field, and 
withdraw his legions into the far distance, to 



31 



give him a chance to re-establish the line that 
has been broken up V 

The Republican party will now complete this 
great revolution. I know it will, because, in the 
first place, it clearly perceives its duties. It 
is unanimous upon this subject. We have 
had hesitation heretofore, but the creed to 
which I have already adverted, which issued 
from that Council Chamber now before me, an- 
nounced the true determination, and embodies 
that great, living, national idea of Freedom, with 
which I began. I know that the Republican 
party will do it, because it finds the necessary 
forces in all the free States adequate, I trust, to 
achieve success, and has forces in reserve, and 
increasing in every slave State in the Union, and 
only waiting until the success of the Republican 
party in the free States will be such as to war- 
rant protection to debate, and free suffrage in the 
slave States. [Applause.] But, above all, I know 
it, because the Republican party has, what is 
necessary in every revolution, chosen the right 
line of policy. It is the policy of peace and 
moral suasion ; of freedom and suffrage ; the 
policy, not of force, but of reason. [Applause.] 
It returns kindness for unkindness ; fervently 
increased loyalty for demonstrations of disloyalty; 
patience as becomes the strong, in contention 
with the weak. [Applause.] 

It leaves the subject of slavery in the slave 
States to the care and responsibility of the slave 
States alone — (loud cheers) — abiding by the con- 
stitution of the country, which makes the slave 
States on this subject sovereign; and, trusting 
that the end cannot be wrong, provided that it 
shall confine itself within its legitimate line of 
duty, thereby making Freedom paramount in 
the Federal Government, and making it the in- 
terest of every American citizen to sustain it as 
such. I know that the Republican party will 
succeed in this, because it is a positive and an 
active party. It is the only party in the country 
that is or can be positive in its action. You have 
three other parties, or forms of parties, but 
each of them without the characteristics of a 
party. You are to choose. The citizen is to 
choose between the Republican party and one of 
these. 

Try them now by their candidates. Mr. Lin- 
coln represents the Republican party. [Hearty 
applause.] He represents a party which has de- 
termined that not one more slave shall be im- 
ported from Africa, or transferred from any 
slave State, domestic or foreign, and placed upon 
the common soil of the United States. [Cheers.] 
If you elect him, you know, and the world 
knows, what you have got. Take the case of 
Mr. John Bell, an honorable man ; a kind man, 
and a very learned man, a very patriotic man ; 
a man whom I respect, and in social intercourse 
quite as much as everywhere else, as here where 
my word may be regarded as simply complimen- 
tary ; but what does Mr. John Bell, and his Con- 
stitutional Union — what is the name of his par- 
ty ? Constitutional Union, is it not ? [Laugh- 
ter.] What does Mr. Bell and his Constitutional 
Union party propose on this question ? He pro- 
poses to ignore it altogether ; not to know that 
there is such a question. If we can suppose 
such a thing possible as Mr. Bell's election by 
the people, what then ? He ignored the question 
until the day of election came, but it will not 
stay ignored. Kansas comes and asks ox de- 



mands to be admitted into the Union. The In- 
dian Territory, also, south of Kansas, must be 
vacated by the Indians, and here at once the 
slaveholders present the question as they will 
also do in the case of New Mexico. It will not 
stay ignored. It will not rest. It cannot rest. 
You have postponed the decision for four years, 
and that is all. Postponing does not settle it. 
When defending law suits, I have seen times 
when I thought I won a great advantage by get- 
ting an adjournment, [laughter], but I always 
found, neveatheless, that it was a great deal bet- 
ter to be beaten in the first instance, and try it 
again, than to hang my hopes upon an adjourn- 
ment. [Renewed laughter and applause.] 

Take the other ; Mr. Breckinridge represents 
a party that proposes a policy the very opposite 
of ours. They propose to extend slavery and to 
use the Federal Government to do it. Let us 
suppose him elected. Will that satisfy the 
American people! [Cries of "No, no! "] Will 
that settle the question 1 [No, no !] That is only 
what Mr, Buchanan has already done. And if I 
should put a vote to this audience, I am sure I 
should get no vote of confidence in Mr. Buchan- 
an. [No, no, no !] That is of course. But if I 
were to go intoa Bell-and-Everett National Union 
party meeting, as vast as this, and ask for a vote 
of confidence in James Buchanan, they would 
say No, just as emphatically as you do. In the 
demonstration for Mr. Douglas, which is to be 
made here day after to-morrow — I shall not be 
here, and would not have the right to appear if I 
were — but any of you have the right, by their 
leave, and you ought not to do it without, to 
offer and put to vote a resolution of confidence 
in James Buchanan, and you would get precisely 
the same negative response that you get here, 
only a little louder. [Applause and laughter.] 
Then the people are not going to elect Mr. Breck- 
inridge, because he proposes to follow in the 
footsteps of Mr, Buchanan, who is rejected. 
Grant, however, that owing to some misappre- 
hension, or some strange combinstion, they may 
obtain all they hope, and indirectly, if not di- 
rectly, make Mr. Breckinridge President. Sup- 
pnse Mr. Breckinridge elected. Does that settle 
the question in favor of slavery ? Then you 
not only have the combination of the Republi- 
cans, and the Constitutional Union party, and 
the Douglas party to drive him out again, 
[Laughter,] but you have only postponed the 
question for four years more, under circum- 
stances far more serious, possibly fatal. 

You have now disposed of them all except the 
Douglas party. Mr. Douglas' party is not a posi- 
tive party. It proposes just what the Bell party 
proposes — to ignore the question in Congresa. 
That is just what we find the people will not do, 
and will not be content to do under John Bell. 
Why should they like it better under Mr. Doug- 
las? Mr. Douglas and his party say there is a 
better way. They don't want it ignored, but 
that it belongs to the Territories, and they can 
settle it better and more wisely than we can. 
What can they do 1 Have they settled it in the 
Territories in favor of slavery'? Are you, aro 
the people of the free States, going to consent to 
that? If they were, why did they not consent to 
the proposition of the President, that the people 
of Kansas should be subjected to slavery under 
the Lecompton Constitution? Then, they said, 
that was the act of the people. But if the peo- 



32 



pie of the Territory should decide in favor of 
freedom, are the slave States going to acquiesce 1 
No, because they have their candidate in the 
person of Mr. Breckinridge to continue the war 
until they shall regain the lost battle. 

But Mr. Douglas' proposition may result in a 
different way. He says, if I understand him 
rightly, that it is immaterial to him, at least he 
has no right and does not propose to decide upon 
the question, whether they vote slavery up or 
down. [Laughter.] Then they will vote sla- 
very up in some territories, and vote it down in 
some other territories. That, fellow citizens, 
will be Compromise ; are you going to be satis- 
fied with a new Compromise? You have tried 
them, and found that they are never kept. On 
the whole, you are very sorry that they were 
ever made. 

But is a compromise that is brought about in 
that way, the irresponsible act of Squatter Sove- 
reignty in the Territories, to satisfy the slave 
States ? They have repudiated Mr. Douglas, the 
ablest man among them all ; they have repudi- 
ated him altogether, because they will not bo 
satisfied with a Squatter Sovereignty that gives 
any Territory whatever to • he free States. 

I have now demonstrated to you, I think, that 
the Republican party is the only positive party. 
But I can show it by another argument. The 
Republican party has one faith, one creed, one 
baptism, one candidate, and will have but one 
victory. The power of slavery has three creeds, 
three faiths, and is to have three victories. 
[Laughter] They have openly confessed, or 
rather, the secret leaks out, through conversa- 
tions and consultations, that they do not expect 
to get a single victory, any more than you expect 
they will. All their hope and endeavor is to 
defeat the Republican party, and take the chances 
for a share of the fruits to result from your de- 
feat, [Applause.] 

Suppose they should, by combinations and 
coalitions, secure the defeat of the Republican 
party, are you going to stay defeated. [Cries of 
no, no.] You have been defeated once, have you 
not ? Can you not bear another defeat ? [Yes, 
half a dozen of them.] You will not have to I 
am sure. [Laughter.] But I am supposing for 
the purpose of argument that we are defeated by 
a coalition. Did any one ever know a cause that 
was lost when it was defeated by a coalition ? 
[No.] There was a coalition in Europe five years 
ago in which Hungary was defeated by the coali- 
tion of Austria with Russia ; but Hungary has 
risen up again to-day, and the coalition is under- 
stood to be dissolved. [Applause.] There was a 
coalition two or three years later, in which Rus- 
sia was defeated by the combination of France 
and England; but Russia is just as strong, just 
as steadily pressing on towards Constantinople 
to-day, as she has been every day from the 
time of the Czar Peter until now. And while 
she has abated nothing of her purposes, and 
nothing of hope, she has gained strength. 
So, all the efforts of the statesmen of both 
France and England are required to keep 
them from falling out with each other before 
the battle begins. There is no danger and 
not much disgrace in being beaten by coalitions ; 
and there is no danger, because they are coali- 
tions. The more the coalitions are necessary, 
the less are they effectual. One party is always 
stronger than two other parties, in a contest, un- 



less the whole result is staked upon a single 
battle. 

But, fellow citizens, the explanation of the 
whole matter is, that there is a time when the 
nation needs and will require and demand the 
settlement of subjects of contention. That time 
has come at last, when the parties in this coun- 
try, both of the slaveholding states and of the 
free states, both the slaveholder and the free 
laboring man, will require an end — a settlement 
of the conflict. It must be repi-essed. The 
time has come to repress it. The people will 
have it repressed. They are not to be forever 
disputing upon old issues and controversies. 
New subjects for national action will come up. 
This controversy must be settled and ended. 
The Republican party is the agent, and its suc- 
cess will terminate the contest about slavery in 
the new states. Let this battle be decided in 
favor of freedom in the territories, and not one 
slave will ever be carried into the territories of 
the United States, and that will end the Irre- 
pressible Conflict. [Great applause.] 

And because it is necessary that it should be 
done, is exactly the reason why it will be done. 
It cannot be settled otherwise, because it in- 
volves a question of justice and of conscience. 
It is for us not merely a question of policy, but 
a question of moral right and duty. It is wrong, 
in our judgment, to perpetuate by our votes or 
to extend slaverv. 

It is a very different thing when the slavehold- 
er proposes to extend slavery ; for that is, with 
him, only a question of merchandise. Men, of 
whatever race or nation, in our estimation, are 
men, not merchandise. According to our faith, 
they all have a natural right to be men, but in 
the estimation of the other party, African slaves 
are not men, but merchandise. It is, therefore, 
nothing more or less with them than a tariff 
question ; a question of protecting commerce. 
With us it is a question of human rights, and 
therefore, when it is settled, and settled in favor 
of the right, it will stay settled just as every 
question that is settled in favor of the right al- 
ways does. 

But if it be taken merely as a question of poli- 
cy, it is equally plain that it will be settled in 
favor of the Republican side, because our high- 
est policy is the development of the resources 
and the increase of the population, wealth and 
strength of the Republic. Every man sees for 
himself, and no man need be told that the coal, 
the iron, the lead, the copper, the silver and the 
gold in our mountains and plains are to be dug 
out by the human hand,, and that the only hand 
that can dig them is the hand of a freeman. 
[Great applause.] Every man sees that this 
wealth, and strength and greatness are to be ac- 
quired by human labor, guided by human intel- 
ligence and human purpose. Every man knows 
that the slave, even if he be a white man, will 
have neither the strength nor the intelligence, 
nor the virtue to create wealth ; for the slave has 
a simple line of interest before him — it is to ef- 
fect the least and consume the most. [Hear, 
hear.] 

But, fellow citizens, I seem to myself to have 
fallen below the dignity and greatness of this 
question, in discussing a proposition whether 
free labor or slave labor is more expedient, or 
more necessary. Let me rise once more, and 
remind you that we are building a new and great 



33 



empire ; not building it, a modern Rome and 
Paris and Naples stand, upon the ruins and over 
the graves of tenfold greater multitudes of men 
than those who now occupy their sites ; but upon 
a soil, where we are the first possessors, and the 
first architecls. The tomb and the catacomb in 
Rome and Paris and Naples are filled with relics 
and implements of human torture and bondage, 
showing the ignorance and barbarity of tlieir 
former occupants. Let us, on the other hand, 
build up an empire that shall leave no monument 
or relic among our graves, and no trace in our 
history, to prove that we were false to the great 
interests of humanity. Human nature is entitled 
to a home on this earth somewhere. Where else 
shall it be if it be not here ? Human nature is 



entitled, among all the nations of the earth, to 
have a nation that will truly represent, defend 
and vindicate it. What other nation shall it be, 
if it be not ours? 

People of Illinois ! People of the great West! 
Yoii are all youthful, vigorous, generous. Your 
States are youthful, vigorous and virtuous. The 
destinies of our country, the hopes of mankind, 
the hopes of humanity rest upon you. Ascend, 
I pray ! I conjure you ! to the dignity of that 
high responsibility. Thus acting, you will have 
peace and harmony and 1 appiness in your future 
years. The world, looking on, will applaud you 
and future generations in all ages and in all 
regions will rise up and call you blessed. [Long 
continued cheering.] 



SPEECH AT LANSING, MICHIGAN. 



IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT REAFFIRMED, 



The Cincinnati Commercial gives the following 
abstract of Senator Seward's speech at Lansing, 
Mich., on the 1st inst. : 

Fellow Citizens : I was leaving, one misty 
morning in September, the City of Jerusalem, 
with my servants and pack-horses to carry pro- 
visions and clothing, having four marines of the 
United States Navy for guard, and an Arab sheik, 
secured by proper bribes, to give me safe conduct 
across the mountains of Judea, from the Holy 
City to the Dead Sea, The Governor had assign- 
ed me a janissary, under the responsibility of the 
bastinado, to see that we got safely out of the 
dangerous passes. As we climbed one of the 
lofty hills which skirted the Dead Sea, we came 
upon a party of native Arabs, who came out to 
meet us. The janissary rode up to the head of 
our column, and demanded in a loud voice of the 
sheik, " How much man is here ?" [Laughter.] 
He counted the whole party, and told " how 
much man " there was by giving the number in 
our ranks. Standing here in the midst of fifteen 
thousand freemen, I might ask the same ques- 
tion, in the same sense in which the Arab used 
it — meaning how many men are here ? But flat- 
tering as it is to see so many gathered together 
to listen to my words, I deem it of much more 
importance to ask, "How im(ch man is here," 
than to inquire how many. I like to speak to as 
much manhood as I can, while I am quite indif- 
ferent as to numbers. 

FeUow citizens, it is not, after aH, so much a 
compliance with the kind invitation of the Repub- 
licans of Michigan which has brought me here, as 
it is my own desires. I have an interest in seeing 
the newly formed Capitol of an embryo State, the 



organization and development of free institutions, 
the prosperity of a free people ; and I would wil- 
lingly travel over many more weary miles of cor- 
duroy road, if I could reach the centre of such and 
so prosperous a community. I would gladly 
derive from the gathered masses of my country- 
men the inspiration needful to instruct me in 
conveying the lessons which our popular life and 
development are perpetually teaching. Believ- 
ing, as I do, that man is but for a day, while 
humanity is universal, I shall have nothing to 
say about men. If I know myself, I have no 
prejudice against any man, however widely he 
may differ from me in opinion. Holding fast to 
principles, independently of personalities, I wish 
to say that society always excuses bad measures 
and bad principles when they are adopted by 
those whom they approve, and with whom they 
are accustomed to co-operate. But if I can find 
out the principles which move men, I shall then 
be able to judge intelligently how far they are to 
be trusted as guides. In order to determine any 
matter justly, we should know the principles in- 
volved in it. Nothing new arises before us for 
settlement, that is not related to what has gone 
before. What has been of old, was yesterday, is 
to-day, and will be again to-morrow. We fulfill 
our part upon the stage, pass ofl', and let the re- 
sponsibility devolve upon our successors. Within 
the past ten years we have added three new 
States to the Federal Union, and in the next ten 
years we shall have added four more. 

The question that most interests us as patriots 
is this — What kind of a nation shall we be- 
come 1 We are so far on our way, and now, if 
the only question for us were how shall we con- 



34 



suit our own ease and peace ? we might say — ^we 
are safe any way. We who are living to-day, 
and perish to-naorrow, are in no danger. If we 
sought only our own peace we might adopt the 
indifferent creed of that political philosopher 
who " don't care whether Slavery is voted up or 
voted down." But to those coming up after us, 
the settlement of that question is as vital and 
important as the settlement of the question of 
the American Revolution was to our fathers. 
Why, fellow-citizens, they might have enjoyed 
peace, and security, and prosperity, and not 
cared for the question that led them to under- 
take and carry through that arduous revolution- 
ary struggle. But they cared for their posterity, 
for us. and therefore they settled the question 
then and there. 

Fellow citizens, what you in the West want 
is, to build a nation which shall be free, pros- 
perous and honored ; a nation which shall be 
acknowledged and revered as the greatest 
people whom the circling sun has ever looked 
down upon, from the beginning of time. Do 
you want anything less? If so, you are not 
worthy of the great trust committed to your 
charge. What kind of a nation then do you 
want 1 Just such a nation as the State of Mich- 
igan ; a land where every man may sit, happy 
and free, not indeed under his own vine and fig- 
tree, but under his own apple, peach and shade 
trees, with none to molest or to make him 
afraid ; a land where all the citizens are free to 
exercise the spontaneous will of freemen. You 
may go through the whole earth, and you will 
never find such a body of citizens as this to-day, 
gathered voluntarily together to discuss and se- 
cure their rights. Not in France or Rome or any 
nation of Europe or Asia, could such a meeting be 
gathered, without a band of armed dragoons be- 
ing gathered to disperse and trample them down. 

Fellow citizens — I was undertaking to analyze 
this extraordinary spectacle of a great popular 
meeting, discussing with dignity and moderation 
the conduct of their rulers, and prepared to dis- 
card from their service every man who has forfeit- 
ed their confidence. The fact of primary impor- 
tance here, is that every man is free. I am here 
surrounded with 15,000 freemen. Now suppose 
for a moment, fellow citizens, that I was sur- 
rounded by 15,000 slaves, or even by 14,000 
slaves and 1,000 freemen, and that having the 
opportunity of assemblage, they were to rise in 
insurrection and rebellion. Of course I must 
not say a word of human rights, or they might 
rise and cut the throats of the 1,000 freemen. 
There can be no such thing as freedom of debate, 
where all or many are slaves. Next, the greatness 
of Michigan consists in the fact that all its citi- 
zens are voluntary colonists. They came here 
not as an enforced emigration — they remain here 
not because they were born here, but because 
they are willing to come, and free to stay or to go. 
Thus, you have not a people gathered only from 
the shores of Western New York, or born with- 
in your own borders, but a people gathered from 
every State in the Federal Union, and every 
country of Europe ; a people fertile in all those 
resources which make a great nation ; a people 
which brings from every State just those ele- 
ments which infuse life, wealth and power. You 
bring the bold, hardy and enterprising, and the 
brave and fearless men out of every Christian 
country on earth. You bring them from Eng- 



land, Ireland, Scotland, France and Italy ; and 
every man who comes is a man fit to be one 
of the founders of a Free State. [A voice in the 
crowd, " From Africa, too ?"] Reverse this rule, 
and suppose that instead of this class of useful 
citizens, you brought only slaves and paupers, 
or even convicts, as some States export convicts 
to countries that will take them. What a differ- 
ence in your civilization and development should 
we behold ! The weak and useless elements in 
a population never voluntarily emigrate. Bold- 
ness, resolution and enterprise are the require- 
ments of successful colonists. No colonies ever 
succeeded without them. This involves conse- 
quences of more importance than at first thought 
you would be likely to' suppose. Can anybody 
tell me what nation on earth could have made 
this vast network of railroads which we possess 
by any other system of labor than ours 1 Can 
any body tell me how we could have made it 
without Irishmen ? Can any one tell, me, if we 
had all been Irishmen, how we could ever have 
got this railway system organized ? 

I am coming now to the question which my 
respected friend from a distance has asked me. 
Now suppose, by any course of policy which you 
should adopt, you could discourage and prevent 
freemen from any part of the world from coming 
in here ? The European States would send their 
refuse classes — their convicts to colonize you. 
There would never be, thanks to the Providence 
that guides above, convicts enough to constitute 
a great country, but there would be enough to 
deteriorate fatally the character, the prosperity 
and the virtue of the people. To multiply such 
classes of population, is but to multiply weak- 
ness. What kind of labor should we have, if the 
freemen, the independent citizens from all coun- 
tries, were to be met with some such discourag- 
ing policy as this? What would you have to 
supply the place of that great, busy, enterprising 
free labor which now distinguishes you 1 What 
could you have, but what South Carolina and 
Georgia fell back upon to replace the need of 
free labor settlers — the importation, namely, 
through the employment of New York vessels, of 
African negroes, at $100 a head, to settle, and 
clear up, and develop the State of Michigan. 
Now you have happily escaped that one great 
evil of having Africans brought here comjmlso- 
rily to perform that labor. And how have you 
been enabled to escape it '? By the wisdom and 
foresight of our forefathers, who, by the Ordi- 
nance of 1787, declared that neither Slavery nor 
involuntary servitude should exist in all your 
borders. Because there were men in those days 
wise enough to look across the broad fields of the 
West and anticipate that there would be those 
who would seek to cover them with Slavery. Is 
there a man in the State of Michigan who would 
be willing to-day that there should exist one 
single, solitary slave, obliged and bound to per- 
form involuntary labor within the State of Michi- 
gan ? [Cries of " No I Not"] If I take out a 
freeman and put in a slave, what happens ? 
More than the loss of an enterprising and useful 
citizen — the loss of virtue—the loss of the spirit 
and energy that exists only with entire freedom. 
Let it once be understood that Slavery may exist 
here, and all the emigrants would desert Michi- 
gan at once. The two systems of labor cannot 
exist as a permanent form of civilization together. 
There is an irrepressible conflict. [Loud and 



35 



long continued cheers.] Introduce Slavery, and 
j^ou expel Freedom. Introduce Freedom, and 
Slavery will, sooner or later, die. Now, from the 
beginning of my existence in politics, I have 
seen this conflict, and I have considered that my 
bounden duty as a patriot was to see to it, so far 
as it depended upon my action, that every new 
State should be a Free State, and to diminish it 
in the Slave States so far as, constitutionally, it 
could be done. That is the whole question. If 
I am wrong, I am grievously wrong. 

Let us see what is the alternative, if I am 
wrong. Did you ever know of a State peopled ex- 
clusively by freemen that was in any danger from 
domestic insurrection, foreign inva.sion, or civil 
war 1 Is there any Slave State but will confess 
itself to-day in danger of insurrection ? A few 
madmen organized at Chatham, in Canada, enter 
the oldest and proudest of the Southern States 
of this Union with a handful of pikes and spears 
— and straightway the Commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia quivers and shakes with the terrors of do- 
mestic insurrection and servile war. Kentucky 
expels from her borders freemen who defend 
freedom within her limits, and Tennessee visits 
with the stake and faggot slaves who aspire to 
freedom. What do we see this moment in Texas 
— a State young and vigorous like Michigan, and 
priding herself upon still greater significance 
and power ? She is convulsed with an almost 
universal panic because Slavery is discussed 
among a portion of her citizens. 

But, I am asked, why interfere in this matter ? 
why not stand aloof, and let it take care of it- 
self, and adopt the Illinois Senator's maxim of 
entire non-intervention. I will tell you why. 
We are maintaining a standing army, of the 
heavy cost of one thousand dollars per man ; 
and a standing navy, which is large, though not 
very effective ; and what are we maintaining it 
for ? To take care of Michigan ; to protect New 
York, or Massachusetts, or Ohio, against internal 
or external violence ? No ; there is not a nation 
on the face of the earth which would dare to 
attack these free States, or any of them, if they 
were even disunited. But we are doing it in 
order that slaves may not escape from slave States 
into the free, and to secure those States from 
domestic insurrection, and because, if we pro- 
voke a foreign foe, Slavery cries out that it is in 
danger. Have I not a right to say that if it were 
possible, I would rather not have an army and 
navy — rather not wring from the hand of free 
labor its earnings to increase an army, whose 
tendency always and everywhere is to corrupt 
public virtue. "' 

What, then, fellow citizens, are my limits 1 
Simply these. The Constitution of the United 
States makes you and me sovereigns over the 
Territories for their good. They are vacant, un- 
occupied, unimproved; and if left to them 
selves, the cupidity of the slaveholder and the 
slave-trader would lead them to enter them and 
colonize them with Slavery. And this would be 
done by a surprise— by a movement, which, 
while it might not people the Territory with 
Slavery, would introduce enough to demoralize 
all the people, and turn them all into apologists 
for Slavery, upon a principle which, I am 
ashamed to confess, has ruled this nation for 
forty years. It is this : that for the sake of 
peace, of haraiony, of quiet, we will sacrifice 
Justice, freedom and the welfare of posterity. 



It is that for the sake of living on good terms 
with your neighbors, while they will not give np 
an error, or a prejudice, or a principle, you will. 
There is no virtue among us — no reliance on 
Grod — no justice, no public conscience, that is 
equal to our dread of the oft-repeated menace, 
that if we don't give up freedom, right, justice 
and everything else, they will set on fire this 
great temple of constitutional liberty and con- 
sume us all. [Loud cheers.] Fellow citizens, I 
have no hope for these United States, but in 
the existence of such honest, candid, considerate 
citizens as will look earnestly into these things 
and interest themselves in their just determina- 
tion. Give me such a man, and I care not 
whether he votes now for Douglas or Breckin- 
ridge, I'll have him a friend of freedom before he 
dies, [applause,] or if he goes an unrepentant 
Democrat to his grave, I'll have his children. 

Fellow citizens, if Gren. Cass had so adminis- 
tered your Territorial Government of Michigan 
as to encourage the introduction of one thousand 
slaves, your noble Commonwealth would now 
have been a Slave State. That is what has been 
done with Texas, where, in a fine agricultural 
State, adapted to free labor. Slavery is not only 
established, but we are bound, by the very act 
of admission, to accept four more new Slave 
States out of her soil. That is what would have 
been done with Kansas had we not fought and 
struggled against it with all the energy of free- 
men. Now, fellow citizens, if the man who 
owns his own land is to be replaced by a man 
who is willing that another man should own him 
as a slave, the quality of society is deteriorated; 
and I believe that if you bring the question 
right home to any sound, right-minded man, he 
would say, I would much rather you would make 
a slave of me than to forge your manacles for 
any man who is under my protection and care. All 
that is wanted in order to settle this matter 
rightly is to make sure that all our efforts con- 
verge to the one great end Of fostering Freedom 
and discouraging Slavery. * 

They tell us that Popular Sovereignty will 
work out the result of Freedom. So it would, 
if in Congress and in the Administration, you 
had the active friends of Freedom instead of 
men who are on the other side. But, whenever 
you have got to that point you have arrived where 
the advocates of that convenient doctrine will 
not follow you. Popular Sovereignty is good 
only to establish Slavery. Its virtues are not 
appreciated when it works the other way. — 
[Laughter and applause.] You will find no ad- 
vocates of Popular Sovereignty among the De- 
mocracy after the 6th day of November next. 
And then you come right to the great issue of 
the irrepressible conflict, and if you don't like 
the conduct of affairs — why, four years are soon 
ended, and all who are opposed to it will have a 
fair opportunity in the next Presidential election 
to fix the machinery for another four years. — 
i [Cheers.] All, on the other hand, which we 
j have to do, is to take care that no missteps give 
I occasion to charge us with abuse of the great 
; trust committed to our hands. All will be well 
\ if we redeem the confidence of those to whom 
^ we have opened up the war to help secure our 
' natior al welfare. All will go right when our 
efforts are directed to reclaim for us, a place in 
the family of free nations, and to secure for us 
the respect and confidence of mankind. 



36 



ON THE MISSOURI BORDER. 



HIS 



SPEECH AND ENTHUSIASTIC RECEPTION AT ST. JOSEPH, 



Mr. Chairman, Gentlemen and Fellow Cit- 
izens — I think that I have, some time befoi'e this, 
said that the most interesting and agreeable sur- 
prise that ever human being had on this earth 
was that which Columbus felt when — after his 
long and tedious voyage in search of a continent, 
the existence of which was unknown to himself, 
as to all mankind, and the evidence of whose 
existence was nothing but a suggestion of his 
own philosophj^, surrounded as he was by a mu- 
tinous crew, who were determined on the destruc- 
tion of his own life if he should continue the voy- 
age unsuccessfully another day — he went out at 
night on the deck of his little vessel, and there 
rose up before him the dark shadow of an island, 
lighted up by the dwellings of human beings like 
himself. That was the most interesting surprise 
that ever occurred to any man on earth. And 
yet I do not think that Columbus was much 
more surprised than I and those who are with 
me have been to-night. 

We have been traveling in a land of friends 
and brethren, through many States, from Maine 
to Missouri !— along the shores of the ocean, 
along the shores of the great lakes and the banks 
of great rivers — and I will not deny that our foot- 
steps have been made pleasant by kind and 
friendly and fraternal greetings. We entered the 
soil of Missouri this morning, at ten o'clock, feel- 
ing that, although we had a right to regard the 
people of Missouri as our brethren, and although 
we were their brethren and friends, yet we were 
to be regarded by its citizens as strangers, if not 
as aliens and enemies ; but this welcome which 
greets us here surpasses anything that we have 
experienced in our sojournings from Bangor, in 
the State of Maine, to this place. The discovery 
that here there is so much of kindness for us, so 
much of respect and consideration, takes us "by 
surprise. [Applause.] I will not deny that it 
affects us with deep sensibility, for we did not 
propose to visit St. Joseph, There is a land be- 
yond you — a land redeemed and saved for free- 
dom, through trials and sufferings that have com- 
mended its young and growing people to the 
respect of mankind and to our peculiar sympathy. 

We proposed to be quiet travelers through the 
State of Missouri, hoping and expecting without 
stopping here, to rest this night on the other 
side of the Missouri, where we knew we would 
be welcome. [A voice — ' 'We won't hurt you."] 
No, I know you won't hurt me. The man who 
never wished evil to any human being, who 
challenges enemies as well as friends to show the 
wrong of which any being made in his own 
form can accuse him when he comes before the 



bar of Justice, has no fear of being harmed in the 
country of his birth and of his affection. But I 
stated that not merely for tlie purpose of showing 
how agreeable is the fraternal welcome. It is 
full of promise. I pass over all that has been 
said to me of consideration for myself. There are 
subjects on which [ take no verdict from my 
fellow citizens. I choose to take • the approba- 
tion if I can get it, of my conscience, and to 
wait till a future age for the respect and consi- 
deration of mankind. [Applause.] But I will 
dwell for one moment on this extraordinary 
scene, full of assurance on many points, and in- 
teresting to every one of you as it is to me. 

The most cheering fact, as it is the most strik- 
ing one in it, is that we who are visitors and pil- 
grims to Kansas, beyond you, find that we have 
reached Kansas already on the northern shores of 
the Missouri river. [Hurrah.] Now come up here 
you — if there are any such before me — who are 
so accustomed to sound an alarm about the dan- 
ger of a dissolution of the Union; come up here, 
and look at the scene of Kansas and Missouri, 
so lately hostile, brought together on either 
shore in the bonds of fraternal affection and 
friendship. [Loud cheers.] That is exactly 
what will always occur whenever you attempt to 
divide this people and to set one portion against 
another. The moment you have brought the 
people to the point where there is the least de- 
gree of danger to the national existence felt, then 
those whom party malice or party ambition have 
arrayed against each other as enemies, will em- 
brace each other as friends and brethren. [En- 
thusiastic applause.] 

Let me tell yoa this simple truth : that though 
you live in a land of slavery there is not a man 
among you who does not love slavery less than 
he loves the Union. [Applause.] Nor have I 
ever met the man who loved freedom so much 
under any of the aspects involved in the pre- 
sent Presidential issues as he loved the Union, 
for it is only through the stability and perpetuity 
of this Union that any blessings whatever rnaj 
be expected to descend on the American people. 

And now, fellow citizens, there is another les- 
son which this occasion and this demonstration 
teach. They teach that there is no difference 
whatever in the natures, constitutions or character 
of the people of the several States of this Union, 
or of the several sections of this Union. They 
are all of one nature, even if they are not all 
native born and educated in the same senti- 
ments. Although many of them came from dis- 
tant lands, still the very effect of being an 
American citizen is to make them all alike. 



37 



I will tell you why this is so. The reason is 
simply this : The Democratic principle that 
every man ought to be the owner of the soil that 
he cultivates, and the owner of the limbs and the 
head that he applies to that culture, has been 
adopted in some of the States earlier than in 
others ; and where it was adopted earliest it has 
worked out the fruits of higher advancement, of 
greater enterprise, of greater prosperity. Where 



it has not been adopted, enterprise and industry 
have languished in proportion. But it is going 
through; it is bound to go through. [A voice — 
" Not here."] Yes, here. As it has already gone 
through eighteen States of the Union so it is bound 
to go through all of the other fifteen. It is bound 
to go through all of the thirty-three States of the 
Union for the simple reason that it is going through 
THE woRED." [ Enthusiastic cheering.] 



Reception and Speeches at St. Louis and Springfield. 

Sketch, of " Old Abe," &c. 



Mr. Seward said that he had not come to see 
St. Louis or the people of Missouri, but to see 
Kansas, which was entitled to his gratitude and 
respect. Missouri could take care of herself; 
she did not care for Republican principles, but 
warred with them altogether. If forty years ago 
Missouri had chosen to be a Free State, she 
would now have four millions of people instead 
of one million. He was a plain spoken man, 
and here was talking treason in the streets of 
St. Louis. He could not talk anything else if he 
talked as an honest man, but he found himself 
out of place here. [A Voice — " You're at home."] 

Here, said he, are the people of Missouri, who 
ask me to make a speech, and at the same time 
there are laws as to what kind of speech I may 
make. The first duty that you owe to your city 
and yourselves is to repeal and abrogate every 
law on your statute book that prohibits a man 
from saying what his honest judgment and sen- 
timent and heart tell him is the truth. [Mingled 
surprise and approbation on the part of the 
crowd.] Though I have said these hard things 
about the State of Missouri, I have no hard sen- 
timents about it or St. Louis, for I have great 
faith and hope — nay, absolute trust — in Provi- 
dence and the American people. What Missouri 
wants is courage, resolution, spirit, manhood— 
not consenting to take only that privilege of 
speech that slaveholders allow, but insisting on 
complete freedom of speech. 

But I have full trust that it will all come right 
in the end; that in ten years you will double 
your population, and that in fifteen or twenty 
years you will have four millions of people. To 
secure that, you have but to let every man who 
comes here from whatever state or nation, spetik 
out what he believes will promote the interests 
and welfare of mankind. What surprised me in 
Kansas was to see the vast improvements made 
there within six years, with so little wealth or 
strength among the people ; and what surprised 



me in Missouri was that, with such a vast terri- 
tory and with such great resources, there was so 
little of population, improvement and strength 
to be found. [Faint manifestations of approval.] 
I ought not, perhaps, to talk these things to you. 

I should have begun at the other end of the 
story, though a citizen of any other State has as 
much liberty here as the citizens of Missouri ; but 
he has less liberty than I like. I want more than 
you have. I want to speak what I think, instead 
of what a Missourian thinl^ I think you are in 
a fair way of shaming your Government into an 
enlightened position. You are in the way of 
being Germanized into it. I would much rather 
you had got into it by being Americanized in- 
stead of Germanized ; but it is bette- to come to 
it through that way than not to come to it at all. 

It was through the Germans Germanizing Great 
Britain that IVIa^na Charta was ob'ained, and 
that that great charter of English liberty came to 
be the charter of the liberties of the sons of Eng- 
land throughout the whole world. Whatever 
lies in my power to do to bring into successful 
and practical operation the great principle that 
this government is a government for free men 
and not for slaves or slaveholders, and that this 
country is to be the home of the exile from every 
land, I shall do as you are going to do by sup- 
porting Abraham Lincoln for President, and Han- 
nibal Hamlin for Vice-President. [Cheers.] 

At Springfield, where Mr. Lincoln resides, 
there was a crowd awaiting the arrival of the 
train, and a salute was fired as it approached 
the station. There was a rush into and about 
the windows of the car in which Mr. Seward 
was seated. Among those who pressed forward 
to .shake him by the hand was Mr. Lincoln him- 
self. His portr; its bear a sufficient resemblance 
to him to make recognition easy, and yet he is 
not by any means so hard featured and almost 
repulsive looking as they represent him. 

On the contrary, while no one would call hirn 



38 






a good looking man, neither would any one be 
repelled bj his aspect. The good humored ex- 
pression that lurks about his clear gray eye, tra 
vels the one long, deep curved furrow down his 
cheek, and makes its home somewhere in the 
region of his capacious mouth, must always 
make him friends, He dresses in the ordinary 
style of Western lawyers, black cloth swallow- 
tailed coat, and pants fitting tightly to his long, 
bony frame ; the inevitable black satin vest, open 
low down, and displaying a broad field of shirt 
bosom, the collar being turned down over a 
black silk neckerchief. 

The crowd commenced to vociferate for Seward 
and finally succeeded in getting him out to the 
platform. After alluding to the extent of his 
trip, he said : 

1 am happy to express, on behalf of the party 
with whom I am traveling, our gratitude and ac- 
knowledgments for this kind and generous re- 
ception at the home of your distinguished fellow- 
citizen, our excellent and honored candidate for 
the Chief Magistracy of the United States. If 
there is in any part of the country a deeper in- 
terest felt in his election than there is in any 
other part, it must of course be here, where he 
has lived a life of usefulness ; where he is sur- 
rounded by the companions of his labors and of 
liis public services. We are happy to report to 
you, although we have traveled over a large part 
of the country, we have found no doubtful 
States. [Applause.] 

You would naturally expect that I should say 
something about the temper and disposition of 
the State of New York. The State of New York 
will give a generous and cheerful and effective 
support to your neighbor, Abraham Lincoln. I 
have heard about combinations and coalitions 
there, and I have been urged from the beginning 
to abandon this journey and turn back on my 
footsteps. Whenever I shall find any reason to 
suspect that the n»ajority which the State of 
New York will give for the Republican candi- 
date, will be less than 60,000, [cheers,] I may 



do so The State of New York never fails — 
never flinches. She has been committed from 
the beginning, as she will be to the end, under 
all circumstances, to the great principles of the 
Republican party. 

She voted to establish this a land of freedom 
for you in 1787. She sustained the Ordinance 
of '87 till you were able to take care of your- 
selves. Among the first acts of her government, 
she abolished slavery for herself. She has known 
nothing of compromises, nothing of condition or 
qualification in this great principle, and she ne- 
ver will. She will sustain your distinguished 
neighbor because she knows he is true to this 
great principle, and when she has helped to 
elect him, by giving as large a majority as can 
be given by any half dozen other States, then 
you will find that she will ask less, exact 
less, fi-om him, and support him more faithfully 
than any other State can do. That is the way 
she did with John Quincy Adams, that is the 
way she sustained Gen. Taylor, and that is the 
way she will sustain Gen. Lincoln. [Great 
cheers.] 

There were loud calls for Gen. Nye, to which 
he responded. While he was speaking the two 
great Republican leaders had a few vords of 
general conversation in the car, within the liear- 
ing of those around them. They expressed 
themselves satisfied as to the result of the elec- 
tion. 

Mr. Lincoln said : Twelve years ago you told 
me that this cause would be successful, and ever 
since I have believed that it would be. Even if 
it did not succeed now, my faith vt^ould not be 
shaken. 

An invitation was extended to the party to go 
to some place not definitely understood. They 
left the car for the purpose in Mr. Lincoln's 
company, but, finding that the train would only 
stop a few moments, they turned back, shook 
hands with the President expectant, and resum- 
ed their seats. Mr. Seward was cheered as the 
train swept through the town. 



SPEECH AT MADISON, WISCONSIN, 

September 12, 1860. 

DUTY AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NORTHWEST. 



Fellow- Citizens — It is a bright September 
sun that is shining down upon us — such a sun 
as nature, pleased with the remembrance of her 
own beneficence, seems to delight in sending 
forth to grace the close of a season which has 
been crowned with abundance and luxuriance, 
unknown even to her own habitual profuseness. 
It is such a sun as nature, pleased with seeing 
the growth of a noble capital in a great State, may 
be supposed to send out to illuminate and to 
make more effulgent the magnificent beauties of 



the place in which we are assembled. It is such 
a September sun as we might almost suppose 
nature, sympathizing with the efforts of good 
men, lovers of liberty, anxious to secure their 
own freedom, to perpetuate that freedom for the 
enjoyment of their posterity, and to extend its 
blessings throughout the whole world, and for 
all generations, may have sent forth in token of 
sympathy with such a noble race. [Applause.] 
But, fellow citizens, bright and cheerful as this 
hour is, my heart is oppressed, and I am unable 



39 



at once to lift myself above the sadness of re- 
cent scenes and painful recollections. I obeyed 
the command of the Republican people of Wis- 
consin to appear before them on this, the 12th 
day of September; and as I approached the 
beautiful seaport, if I may so call the city that 
crowns the shores of Lake Michigan, and affords 
entrance to this magnificent State, I had antici- 
pated, because I had become habituated to, a 
welcome that should be distinguished by the 
light of a thousand torches, and by the voices of 
music and of cannon. But the angel of death 
passed just before me on the way, and instead of 
footsteps lighted with the greeting of thousands of 
my fellow citizens, I found only a thick darkness, 
the gloom increased, as only nature's darkness can 
be, by the weeping and wailing of mothers for the 
loss of children, and refusing to be comforted. 
I have been quite unable to rise from that sud- 
den shock ; to forget that instead of the voice of 
a kind and merry and genial welcome, I heard 
only mourning and lamentation in the streets. 

To you, perhaps, the scene seems somewhat 
foreign, because it occurred in your beautiful 
seaport, but it was not merely a municipal ca- 
lamity. It is a calamity and disaster that befalls 
the State, and strikes home dismay and horror 
to the bosoms of all its people, for those were 
citizens of the State who perished, and those who 
survive are the mourners ; the desolate widows 
and orphans who are bereaved. Let me, before 
I proceed, take the liberty to bring this subject 
home to the State authorities of Wisconsin, and 
to ask and to implore that nothing may be left 
undone, if there is yet anything that can be done, 
to rescue a single sufferer from that dreadful ca- 
lamity, and to bring to the comforts of social life, 
and of a sound, good, religious, and public edu- 
cation, the orphans who are left to wander on the 
streets by the lake side. 

Fellow citizens, it is a political law — and when 
I say political law, I mean a higher law — [cries 
of "good,"] — a law of Providence, that empire 
has, for the last three thousand years, so long as 
we have records of civilization, made its way 
constantly westward, and that it must continue 
to move on westward until the tides of the re- 
newed and of the decaying civilizations of the 
world meet on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. 
Within a year I have seemed to myself to follow 
the track of empire in its westward march for 
three thousand years. I stood but a year ago on 
the hill of Calvary. I stood soon afterward on 
the Piroeus of Athens. Again I found myself on 
the banks of the Tiber. Still advancing westward 
I rested under the shades of the palaces of the 
kings of England, and trod the streets of the now 
renovated capital of France, From those capi- 
tals I made my way at last to Washington, the 
city of established empire for the present genera- 
tion of men, and of influence over the destinies 
of mankind. [Applause.] 

Empire moves far more rapidly in modern 
than it did in ancient times. The empire estab- 
lished at Washington, is of less than a hundred 
years formation. It was the empire of thirteen 
Atlantic American States. Still practically the 
mission of that empire is fulfilled. The power 
that directs it is ready to pass away from those 
thirteen States, and although held and exercised 
under the same Constitution and national form 
of government, yet it is now in the very act of 
being transferred from the thirteen States east 



of the Alleghany mountains and on the coast of 
the Atlantic ocean, to the twenty States that lis 
west of the AUeghanies, and stretch away from 
their base to the base of the Rocky Mountains. 
The political power of the Republic, the empire 
is already here in the plain that stretches be- 
tween the great lakes on the east and the base 
of the Rocky Mountains on the west ; and you 
are heirs to it. When the next census shall re- 
veal your power, you will be found to be the 
masters of the United States of America, and 
through them the dominating political power of 
the world. [Applause — and voice, "Amen,"] 
Our mission, if I may say that I belong to that 
eastern and falling empire instead of the rising 
western one — the mission of the thirteen States 
has been practically accomplished. And what 
is it ? Just like the mission of every other power 
on earth. To reproduce, to produce a new and 
greater and better power than we have been our- 
selves, [applause,] to introduce on the stage of 
human affairs twenty new States and to prepare 
the way for twenty more, before whose rising 
greatness and splendor, all our own achievements 
pale and fade away. We have done this with as 
much forethought perhaps as any people ever 
exercised, by saving the broad domain which you 
atid these other forty States are to occupy, saving 
it for your possession, and so far as we had vir- 
tue enough, by surrounding it with barriers 
against the intrusion of ignorance, superstition 
and slavery. [Applause.] 

Because you are to rise to the ascendant and 
exercise a dominating influence, you are not, 
therefore, to cast off the ancient and honored 
thirteen that opened the way for you and mar- 
shaled you into this noble possession, nor are 
you to cast off" the new States of tlie AVest. But 
you are to lay still broader foundations, and to 
erect still more noble columns to sustain the 
empire which our fathers established, and which 
it is the manifest will of our Heavenly Father 
shall reach from the shores of the lakes to the 
Gulf of Mexico, and from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific ocean. It was a free government which 
they established, and it was a self-government — 
a government such as, on so large a scale, or in- 
deed on any scale, has never before existed. I 
know that when you consider what a magnifi- 
cent destiny you have before you, to lay your 
hand on the Atlantic coast, and to extend your 
power to the Pacific ocean and grasp the great 
commerce of the east, you will fully appreciate 
the responsibility. It is only to be done by main- 
taining the Democratic system of government. 
There is no other name given under heaven by 
which, in this generation, nations can be saved 
from desolation and ruin, than Democracy. 
This, to many conservative ears, would seem a 
strange proposition, and yet it is so simple that 
I lack the power almost of elucidating it. Look 
at England, She is ambitious, as she well may 
be, and ought to be, to retain that dominion, 
reaching into every part of the habitable globe 
which she now exercises. She is T.kely to do it, 
too, and may do it, by reducing, every succes- 
sive year, the power of her aristocracy, and in- 
troducing more and moi-e, the popular element 
of Democracy into the administration of our 
government. 

In many respects the government of England, 
though more aristocratic, is still less monarchica[ 
than our own. The British empire exists to-day 



40 



only by recognizing and gradually adopting the 
great truth that if the British empire is to stand, 
it is the British people who are to maintain that 
empire and enjoy and exercise it. France, the 
other great European power, which seems to 
Stand firmer now than ever, and to be renewing 
lier career of prosperity and glory— France, un- 
der the form of a despotism, has adopted the 
3)rinciple of univei'sal suffrage, and the empire of 
France to-day is a democracy. The Austrian 
empire is falling. And why ? Because democ- 
racy is rising in Germany to demand the libera- 
tion of the people of its various nations, and the 
exercise of universal suffrage. And Italy to-day 
all along the coast of the Mediterranean, is rising 
up to the dignity of renewed national life, by 
adopting the principle of universal suffrage and 
the limitation of power by the action of the whole 
people. 

Now if in the Old World, where government 
and empire are entrenched and established so 
strong in hereditary aristocracy, no empire can 
stand except as it yields to the democratic prin- 
ciple; look around over the United States of 
America, and say how long you can ho!d these 
States in a federal union' or maintain one com- 
mon authority or empire here, except on the 
principles of democracy ? Therefore, it is that, 
1 say, that you of the northwest are, above all j 
things, first, last, and all the time, to recognize j 
as the groat element of the republic, the system ■ 
and principles of democracy 



Some two hundred years ago, when laborers 
were scarce, and the field to be cultivated was 
large, private citizens of the Atlantic States, 
driven, as they said, by the cupidity of the Bri- 
tish Government, introduced the labor of slaves 
into the American Colonies, and then established 
the aristocracy of land and labor. The system 
pervaded nearly the whole Atlantic States. If 
it had not been interrupted it would have per- 
vaded the Continent of America ; and instead of 
what you see, and of what you are a part, and 
of what you do, — instead of emigration from the 
Eastern States into the prairies of the West, and 
instead of emigration from Europe all over the 
United States, you would have had in the North- 
west this day the Boston and New York mer- 
chant importing laborers instead of freemen into 
the seaports, and dispersing them over the en- 
tire valley of the Mississippi. That would have 
been the condition of civilization on this conti- 
nent. It has been fortunate for you, and fortu- 
nate for us, that such a desecration of the mag- 
nificent scene, provided by nature for the im- 
provement of human society and for the increase 
of human happiness, has been arrested so soon ; 
and you will see how felicitous it is when for 
one moment you compare the condition of Wis- 
consin, and of Maine, and of Iowa, and of Illi- 
nois, and of Indiana, and of all the Free States 
of the Union, wiih the Islards of the West In- 
dies, colonized just at the same time that the 
Atlantic States were colonized, and with the 



But, fellow citizens, it is easy to talk about de- j condition of South America, a whole and entire 



mocracy. I have heard some men prate of it by 
the hour, and admire it, and shout for it, and ex- 
press their reverence for it ; and yet I have seen 
that they never comprehend the simplest ele- 
ment of democracy ? What is it ? Is it the op- 
posite of monarchy or of aristocracy ? Aristo- 
cracy is maintained everywhere, in all lands, by 
one of two systems, or by both combined. An 
aristocracy is the government in which the pri- 
vileged own the lands, and the many unprivi- 
leged work them, or in which the few privileged 
own the laborers and the laborers work for 
them. In either case the laborer works on com- 
pulsion, and under the constraint of force ; and 
in either case he takes that which may remain 
after the wants of the owners of land or labor 
are both satisfied. The laborer must rest con- 
tent with the privilege of being protected in his 
personal rights ; and the powers of the govern- 
ment are exercised by the owner, of labor and 
of land. 

Here, then, you see I have brought you to the 
consideration of the great problem of society in 
this republic or empire. It is this : Is there 
any danger tnat in the United States the citizen 
will not be the owner of the land which he cul- 
tivates 1 If there is any part of the United 
States where the labor or the land is monopo- 
lized by capital, there is a place in which the 
democratic element has not yet had its intro- 
duction or been permitted to work its way effec- 
tually. So, on the other hand, as here, where 
you are, no man can monopolize the land which 
another man is obliged to cultivate, much less 
monopolize the labor by which the lands on your 
fields are cultivated, yoa are entirely and abso- 
lutely established and grounded on democratic 
principles. But, you all know, that has not al- 
ways been the history of our whole country, and, 
at times, was not the condition of any part of it 



I new continent, abounding in the most luxuriant 
vegetation and with the greatest resources of 
mineral wealth, absolutely reduced to a condi- 
tion of perpetual civil war, and ever renewed 
ruinous desolation. The salvation of North 
America from all those disasters that have be- 
fallen the Southern portion of the continent is 
the result of bold and firm procedure on the 
part of your ancestors and mine, less than a 
hundred years ago. 

The Government of the United States was es- 
tablished in an auspicious moment. The world 
had become aroused to the injustice as well as to 
the inexpediency of the system of Slavery, and 
the people of the United States, rising up to the 
dignity of the decision that was before them, 
determined to prevent the further extension, as 
far and fast as possible, to secure the abolition 
of African Slavery. It was under the influence 
of a high, righteous, noble, humane excitement 
like that, that even the State of Virginia, itself a 
Slave State, like the State of New York, deter- 
mined that, so far as her power and her will could 
command the future. Slavery should cease for- 
ever ; first, by abolishing the African Slave 
Trade, which would bring about, ultimately, the 
cessation of domestic Slavery ; and, in the se- 
cond place, by declaring that her consent to the 
cession of territory northwest of the Ohio, of 
which you occupy so beautiful a part, was given 
with the expre ^ condition that it should never 
be the home of Slavery or involuntary servitude. 
[Applause.] 

But, fellow citizens, I need not remind you 
that this, like most other efforts of human so- 
ciety to do good and to advance the welfare of 
mankind, had its painful and unfortunate reac- 
tion. Hardly twenty years had elapsed after the 
passage of those noble acts for the foundation of 
liberty on the North American contineutj before 



41 



there came over the nation a tide of demoraliza- 
tion, the results of which, coming on us with 
such fearful rapidity, surpass almost our power 
to describe or to sufficiently deplore. 

What have we seen since that was done ? We 
have seen the people of the United States — for it 
is of no use to cast responsibility on parties, or 
administrations, or statesmen — extend slavery 
all around the coast of the Grulf of Mexico. We 
have seen them take Texas into the Union and 
agree that she should come in as a Slave State, 
and liave the right to multiply herself into four 
more Slave States. We have seen California 
and New Mexico conquered by ihe people of the 
Uiiited States, with the deliberate consent, if not 
purpose, that Slavery should be extended from 
the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean. We 
have seen the Constitution of the United States, 
perverted by the consent of the people until that 
Constitution, instead of being a law of freedom 
and a citadel of human rights, has come to be 
pronounced by the affected judgment and willing 
consent of the highest tribunal of the United 
States, yet" enjoying the confidence and support 
of the people, to be a tower and bulwark of 
human slavery, of African bondage; and you 
have it now announced by the government ol 
the United States, which you yourselves brought 
into ]:)Ower, that wherever the Constitution of the 
United States goes, it carries, not freedom with 
the eagles of conquest, but hateful bondage. 
[Applause.] If the principle which you have 
thus permitted to be established is true, then 
there is not an arsenal within the United States, 
not a iijilitary or naval school of the federal gov- 
ernment, not a federal jail, not a dock yard, not 
a ship that traverses the ocean, bearing the 
American Hag in any part of the land, where the 
law, the normal law, the law by which men are 
tried and judged, is not a law by whicli ever\ 
man whose ancestor was a slave is a slave, and 
by which property in slaves, not freedom of 
man, is the real condition of society under 
the federal system of government. I can only 
ask you to consider for a moment how near you 
have come to losing everything which you enjoy 
of this great interest of freedom. The battle 
culminated at last on the fields of Kansas. 

How severe and how dreadful a battle that has 
been, you all know. It was a great and despe- 
rate effort of the aristocracy of capital in labor, 
to carry their system practically with all its evils 
to the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, and to cut 
off the Atlantic States from all communication 
with the sister States on the Pacific, and so extend 
Slavery from the centre, both ways, restoring it 
throughout the whole country. You will say 
that this was a very visionary attempt ; but it 
was far from being visionary. It was possible, 
and for a time seemed fearfully probable — prob- 
able for this reason, that the land must have 
labor, and that it must be either the labor of free- 
men or the labor of slaves. Introduce slave labor 
in any way that you can, and free labor is repel- 
led, and avoids it. Slave labor was introduced 
into this country by the opening of the African 
slave trade, and when the Territory of the Uni- 
ted States, in the interior of the continent was 
open to Slavery with your consent and mine, 
nothing then would have remained hut to reopen 
and restore the African slave trade ; for it is pro- 
hibited only by a law, and the same power that 
made the law could repeal and abrogate it. The 



same power that abrogated the Missouri Com- 
promise in 1854, would, if the efforts to establish 
Slavery in Kansas had been successful, have 
been, after a short time, bold enough, daring 
enough, desperate enough, to have repealed the 
prohibition of the African slave trade. And, in- 
deed, that is yet a possibility now ; for, disguise 
these issues now before the American people as 
they may be disguised by the Democratic party, 
yet it is nevertheless perfectly true, that if you 
forego your opposition and resistance to Slavery, 
if this popular resistance should be withdrawn, 
or should, for any reason, cease, then the Afri- 
can slave trade, which at first illegally renews 
itself along the coasts of our Southern States, 
would graduall}'- steal up the Mississippi, until 
the people, tired with a hopeless resistance, 
should become indifferent, and African Slavery 
would once more become the disgraceful trade 
of the American flag. 

Now, all these evils would have happened flU 
this abandonment of the continent of North 
America to slavery would have happened, and 
have been inevitable, had resistance to it de- 
pended alone on the people of the thirteen origi- 
nal States. We were already overpowered there. 
From one end of the Atlantic States to the other, 
there were, in 1850, scarcely three States which 
did not declare that henceforth they gave up the 
contest, and that they were willing that the peo- 
ple of the new Territories might have slavery or 
freedom, and might come into the Union as slave 
States or as free States, just as they pleased. 

When that had happened, what would have 
followed 1 Why, that the people who had the 
right to slavery if they pleased, had the right 
to get slaves if they pleased. How then were 
we saved ? It seems almost as if it was Provi- 
dential that these new States of the Northwest, 
the State of Michigan, the State of Wisconsin, 
the State of Iowa, the State of Maryland, the 
State of Ohio, founded on this reservation for 
freedom that had been made in the year 1787, 
matured just in the critical moment to inter- 
pose, to rally the free States of the Atlantic 
coast, to call Ihem back to their ancient princi- 
ples, to nerve them to sustain them in the con- 
test at the Capital, and to send their noble and 
true sons and daughters to the plains of Kansas, 
to defend, at the peril of their homes, and even 
their lives, if need were, the precious soil which 
had been abandoned by the Government to 
slavery fr'om the intrusion of that, the greatest 
evil that has ever befallen our land. [Applause.] 
You matured in the right time. And how came 
you to mature ? How came you to be better, 
wiser, than we of the Atlantic States ? The 
reason is a simple one, perfectly plain. Your 
soil had been never polluted by the footprints of 
a slave. Every foot of ours had been redeemed 
from slavery. You are a people educated in the 
love of freedom, and to whom the practice of 
freedom and of Democracy belongs, for every 
one of you own the land you cultivate, and no 
huinan being that has ever trodden it has worn 
the manacles of a slave. [Loud applause.] 
And you come fi-om other regions too. You 
come from the South, where you knew the evils 
of slavery. You come from Germany and from 
Ireland, and from Holland and from France, and 
from all over the face of the globe, where you 
have learned by experience the sufferings that 
result from aristocracy and oppression. [Ap- 



42 



plause.] And you brought away with you from 
your homes the sentiments, the education of 
freemen. You came then just at the right mo- 
ment. You came prepared. You came qualifi- 
ed. You came sent by the Almighty to rescue 
this land and the whole continent from slavery. 
Did ever men have a more glorious duty to per- 
form, or a more beneficent destiny before them 
than the people of the northwestern angle tha 
lies between the Ohio river and the great lakes 
and the Mississippi ? I am glad to see that you 
are worthy of it, that you appreciate it. 

It does not need that I should stimulate you 
by an appeal to your patriotism, to your love of 
justice, and to your honor, to perfect this great 
work, to persevere in it until you shall bring the 
Government of the United States to stand here- 
after as it stood forty years ago, a tower of fx-ee- 
dom, and a refuge for the oppressed of all lands, 
instead of a bulwark of slavery. [Applause.] I 
prefer rather to deal in what may perhaps be not 
less pleasing to you, and that is, to tell you that 
the whole responsibility rests henceforth directly 
or indirectly on the people of the northwest. 
Abandon that responsibility, and slavery extends 
from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of St. Law- 
rence on the Atlantic coast. There can be no 
virtue in commercial and manufacturing com- 
munities to maintain a Democracy, when the 
Democracy themselves do not want a Demo- 
cracy. [Laughter.] There is no virtue in Pearl 
street, in Wall street, in Court street, in Chestnut 
street, in any other street of great commei-cial 
cities, that can save the great Democratic Gov- 
ernment of ours, when you cease to uphold it 
with your intelligent votes, your strong and 
mighty hands. You must, therefore, lead us, as 
we heretofore reserved and prepared the way for 
you. We resign to you the banner of human 
rights and human liberty, on this continent, and 
we bid you be firm, bold and onward, and then 
you may hope that we will be able to follow you. 

I have said that you are to have the responsi- 
bility alone. I have shown you that in the At- 
lantic Northern States we were dependent on 
you. I need not tell you that at present you can 
expect no effective support or sympathy in the 
Atlantic Southern States. 

You must demonstrate the wisdom of our 
cause by argument, by reason, by the firm exer- 
cise of suffrage, in every way in which the hu- 
man intelligence and human judgment can be 
convinced of truth and right— you must demon- 
strate it, giving line upon line and precept upon 
precept, overcoming passion and prejudice and 
enmity, with gentleness, with patience, with 
loving kindness to your brethren of the Slave 
States, until they shall see that the way of wis- 
dom which you have chosen, is also the path of 
peace [Applause.] The Southwest are sharers 
with you of the Northwest in this great inheri- 
tance of empire. It belongs equally to them 
and to you. They have plains as beautiful. 
They have rivers as noble. They have all the 
elements of wealth, prosperity, and power that 
you have. Still from them, from Kentucky and 
Tennessee, from Missouri and Arkansas, from 
Alabama and Missouri, and Louisiana, you will 
for the present, receive no aid or support ; but 
you will have to maintain your principles in op- 
position, although I trust, not in defiance of 
them — and that, for the simple reason that in the 
great year 1787, when Mr. Jefierson proposed ' 



that Slavery should be excluded in all the pub- 
lic domain of the United States, lying south- 
west, as well as that lying northwest of the 
Ohio river, those States had not the forecast, 
had not the judgment, to surrender the tempo- 
rary conveniences and advantages of Slavery, 
and to elect, as your ancestors chose for you, 
the great system of Free Labor. They chose 
Slavery, and they have to drag out, for some 
years yet, not long, not so long as some of you 
will live, but still so long that they will be a 
drag and a weight upon your movements, in- 
stead of lending you assistance — they have got 
to drag out, to the end, their system of Slave 
Labor. You have, therefore, as you see, the 
whole responsibility. It depends upon you. 
You have no reliance upon the Atlantic States 
of the east, north or south. You have the opposi- 
tion of the southern States on either side of the 
Alleghany mountains ; but still the power is 
with you. You are situated where all powers 
have ever been, that have controlled the destiny 
of the nation to which they belonged. You are 
in the land which produces the wheat and the 
corn, the cereal grains — the land that is covered 
with the oak, and where they say the Slave 
cannot live. They are in the land that pro- 
duces cotton and sugar, and the tropical fruits 
— in the land where they say the white man 
cannot labor, in the land where the white man 
must perish if he have not a negro Slave to pro- 
vide him with food and raiment. [Laughter.] 
They do, indeed, command the mouths of the 
rivers ; but what is that worth, except as they 
derive perpetual supplies, perpetual moral re- 
invigoration, from the hardy sons of the north, 
that reside around the sources of those mighty 
rivers 1 [Applause.] 

I am sure that, in this, I am speaking only 
words of truth and experience. The northwest 
is by no means so small as you may think it ; I 
speak to you because I feel that I am, and, dur- 
ing all my mature life, have been one of you. 
Although of New York, I am still a citizen of the 
northwest. [Good.] The northwest extends 
eastward to the base of the Alleghany mountains, 
and does not all of Western New York lie west- 
ward of the Alleghany mountains 1 [Good.] 

Whence comes all the inspiration of free soil, 
which spreads itself with such cheerful voices 
over all these plains'? Why, from New York, 
westward of the Alleghany mountains. The peo- 
ple before me — who are you but New York. men, 
while you are men of the northwest ? It is an 
old proverb, that men change the skies but not 
their minds, when they emigrate ; but you have 
changed neither skies nor mind. [Applause.] I 
might call the roll of Western New York, and I 
doubt not that, when I came to Herkimer county, 
I should have a response. I certainly have had 
responses here from Cayuga and Genesee [A 
voice : '* Erie "], and from Erie [A voice : *' Au- 
burn "], and from Auburn [A voice : *' Seneca "], 
and from Seneca [A voice : "Yates "], and from 
Yates; aye, aye. [Loud laughter.] Bless my 
soul ! I have been laboring under a delusion all 
the time. I thought I was out here, midway be- 
tween the Mississippi and the Lakes, and I find 
I am standing on the stage in the centre park at 
home. [A voice: " Right at home."] [Another 
voice: " And old Ontario."] And old Ontario. 
We will not forget old Ontario, nor old Oswego, 
nor Oneida. 



43 



Fellow citizens, I will add but one word more ; 
this is not the business of this day alone. It is 
not the business of this year alone. It is not the 
business of the northwest alone. It is the in- 
terest, the destiny of human society on the conti- 
nent. You are to make this whole continent, from 
north to south, from east to west, a land of freedom 
and a land of happiness. [Applause.] There is no 
power on earth now existing, no empire existing, 
or as yet established, that is to equal or can equal 
in duration the future of the United States. It is 
not for ourselves alone ; you have the least possi- 
ble interest in it. It is, indeed, for those children 
of yours. Old John Adams, when at the close 



of the revolutionary war he sat down and count- 
ed up the losses and sacrifices that he had en- 
dured and made, rejoiced in the establishment 
of the independence which had been the great 
object of his life, and said, *' I have gained 
nothing. 1 should have been even more com- 
fortable, perhaps, and more quiet, had we re- 
mained under the British dominion ; but for my 
children, and for their children, and for the 
children of the generation that labored with me, 
I feel that we have done a work which entitles 
us to rejoice, and call upon us by our successes 
to render our thanks to Almighty God." 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 



EVEISrilSrG- SPEECH AT DETROIT, 



September 4., 1860. 



In the evening, after Mr. Seward had made 
his great speech in Detroit, he was called upon 
at his lodgings (Senator Chandler's) by an im- 
mense multitude. 

Senator Chandler made a few remarks, and 
then gave way to Senator Seward. Loud cheei's 
were given for Seward as he came forward to the 
edge of the balcony. He said : 

Fellow Citizens : If I appear in obedience to 
your call to-night, I hope it will only be a new 
illustration of an old practice of mine, never to 
give up an honest and virtuous attempt, though 
I might fail in it the first time. I tried to-day 
and utterly failed to make the Republicans of 
Michigan hear, and now, in obedience to your 
call to-night, renew the effort. The end, on the 
part of the peopla, is at hand. It is now upon 
us, and the simple reason is that the people have 
become at last attentive, willing to be convinced, 
and satisfied of the soundness of the Republican 
faith. It has been a task. We had first to reach 
the young through the prejudices of the old. I 
have never expected my own age and generation 
to relinquish the prejudices in which they and I 
were born. I have expected, as has been the 
case heretofore in the histoi-y of mankind, that 
the old would remain unconverted, and that the 
great- work of reformation and progress would 
rest with the young. That has come at last, for 
though the Democratic party have denied the as- 



cendency and obligations of the " higher law," 
still they bear testimony to it in their lives if not 
in their conversation. [Laughter,] Democracy 
will die in obedience to "higher law," and Re- 
publicans are born, and will be born, and none 
but Republicans will be born in the United States 
after the year of 1860. [Laughter and applause.] 
The fir.=t generation of the young men of the 
country, educated in the Republican faith, has 
appeared in your presence by a strong and bold 
demonstrative representaiion to-night. It is the 
young men who constitute the Wide- Awake force. 
Ten years ago, and twenty years ago, the Wide- 
Awake force were incapable of being organized. 
Four years ago it was organized for the distrac- 
tion of the country and the Republican cause. 
To-day the young men of the United States are 
for the first time on the side of freedom against 
slavery. [Great applause.] Go on, then, and 
do your work. Put this great cause into the 
keeping of your great, honest, worthy leader, 
Abraham Lincoln. [A voice — " The irrepressi- 
ble conflict."] Believe me sincere when I say 
that if it had devolved upon me to select from all 
men in the United States a man to whom I should 
confide the standard of this cause — which is the 
object for which I have lived and for which I 
would be willing to die — that man would have 
been Abraham Lincoln. [Great applause.] 



44 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT EA CROSSE, ^WI S CdSTSUST, 
September 14r, 1860. 



Gov. Seward reached La Crosse at ten o'clock 
this morning, and found a large crowd of citizens 
— with the inevitable Wide-Awakes among them 
— assembled on the levee. An address of wel- 
come was presented to Mr. Seward, on the deck 
of the steamboat, to which he replied as follows : 

Fellow Citizens — It has always been my pur- 
pose to anticipate the progress of civilization in 
the West, by visiting the interior portion of the 
continent before the Indian and his canoe have 
given place to the white man, the steamer, the 
railroad and the telegraph. With that view, I 
explored, in 1856, the banks of Lake Superior, 
one year only in advance of the establishment of 
civilization at Sault St. Marie. It has been my 
misfortune that I have not been able to execut'e 
my purpose to visit the Upper Mississippi until I 
find that I can no longer trace on its shores or 
bluffs, or among the people who gather around 
me, a single feature of the portraits of Catlin, 
which first made me acquainted with this won- 
derful and romantic region. I must take you 
as I find you. I have come here at last, at- 
tended by a few friends from the Eastern States 
— from Ohio, from New York, from Michigan, 
from Massachusetts — with them to see for our- 
selves the wonders of this great civilization which 
are opening here to herald the establishment of 
political power and empire in the Northwest. 
But our anticipations are surpassed by what we 
see. None of us would have believed that ele- 
gant cities would have so rapidly sprung up on 
these shores ; nor would we have looked for such 
evidences of improvement and development as 
would require a hundred years to execute in the 
States from which we come. This is gratifying 
to us, because it shows how rapidly the Ameri- 
can people can improve resources, develop wealth, 
and establish constitutional power and guaran- 
tees for the protection of freedom. If we found 
you isolated and separate communities, distinct 
from ourselves, we still should be obliged to re- 
joice in such evidences of prosperity and growing 
greatness. How much more gratifying it is for 
us to find, in everything that we see and hear, 
abundant evidences that Ave are, after all, not 
separate and distinct peoples — not distinct peo- 
ples of Iowa, Wisconsin, New York and Massa- 
chusetts, but that we are one people — from Ply- 
mouth Rock at least to tho banks of the Missis- 
sippi and to the foot of the Rocky Mountains. 
ll is an assurance that enables us to trample under 
our feet every menace, every th'-eat of di.su)don, every 
alarm and apprehmsion of the dism/mbermeiit of 
this great empire; for we find in the sentiments 
which you have expressed to us to-day precisely 
the sentiments which were kindled two hundred 



years ago on Plymouth Rock, and which are 
spreading wider and wider, taking deeper and 
deeper roots in the American soil. They give us 
the sure and reliable guarantee that under every 
possible change of condition and circumstance 
the American people will nowhere forget the 
common interests, the common aifections and the 
common destiny which make them all one peo- 
ple. 

Mr. Seward addressed a large audience in the 
afternoon. He said that he found it difficult to 
discuss things of the past. Slavery, said he, as 
a federal institution, is obsolete in this land. 
Only one argument remains to the Democracy. 
It comes to us loudly and clamorously from the 
Southern States, and querulously and timidly 
from among ourselves. It is that if we do not 
choose to give up the contest, and if we elect our 
candidate, the fabric of this Union shall be broken 
down and shall perish in ruins. That is the 
only argument left — that the Union will be dis- 
solved if we succeed in electing the honorable 
statesman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, Well, 
I prcpose to address a few words to you on the 
subject, and to examine how imminent that dan- 
ger is with which we are menaced. The Union 
is to be dissolved. Certainly, Why not, if 
Abraham Lincoln, or the Congress of the United 
States acting with him, shall commit any overt 
act that j-hall be unjust or oppressive to tho slave 
States or to any portion of the Union ? But 
they will not wait for that, and they are very wise 
in not waiting for it, because if they put their 
threats on that condition they would, in the first 
place, have no argument against Mr. Lincoln's 
election, and in the next place they would have to 
wait until after tlie election before they raised the 
argument. [Laughter.] So it must be on the con- 
diiion, pure and simple, that Abraham Lincoln 
shall be elected President of the United States. 

Well, if he be elected, it will be by a majority 
of the American people expressing their choice 
for him under the forms of the constitution, and 
by the laws made by slaveholders and his oppo- 
nents,equally with freesoilers and their friends, 
if Abraham Lincoln shall be elected lawfully 
and constitutionally, then the government is to 
come down. Bless my soul, fellow-citizens, 
what can we do ? If we like Abraham Lincoln, 
as I am sure you do — don't you 1 — [aye, aye, — ] 
if all the people of the United States like him 
better than they like John Bell, or Stephen A. 
Douglas, or Mr. Breckinridge, how can we help 
his being elected 1 [Laughter and applause.] 
If he shall be elected, what is that more than 
the people of the United States have been guilty 
of doing for seventy years, every fourth year— 



m 



electing one man whom they like better than 
any other man ? Is there anything wrong in 
that 1 Can you contrive any way in which you 
can elect a minority man — a man whom the peo- 
ple do not like 1 If so, I should like to see the 
patent produced. "What kind of government 
would it be if we elected a man we did not like 
instead of a man we did Hke 1 My impression 
is that it would be a government not differing 
very far from the empire of Austria, where they 
always manage to elect a man whom the people 
do not like, and where they have an admirable 
way of saving the Union by organizing an armj^ 
of 500,000 men armed to the teeth to maintain 
the man whom the people do not like, rather 
than let them have the man whom they do like. 
[A Voice — That is the way the democrats are 
doing here.] That is the way they would do 
everywhere ; but that is the very thing which 
cannot be done here. Fellow citizens, let me 
say to you that those who talk about destroying 
this Union, and even those who fear that it is 
going to be destroyed because the people do 
what they lawfully may do and what they have 
a constitutional right to do, know nothing at all 
of the subject of which they are talking. They 
have no idea of what the Union is. They 
have never raised their thoughts so high, nor 
examined its foundations so low, nor surveyed 
its proportions broadly enough to know what 
this Union is. They understand it as a copart- 
nership of thirty-three States, fifteen of which 
delight in the slave trade, and eighteen of which 
dislike and repudiate the slave trade, and pre- 
fer the hiring and compensation of free laborers, 
"We may call slavery by gentle names or mod- 
est terms, but slavery is nothing less than the 
trade in slaves, for it makes merchandise of the 
bodies and souls of men. Now these fifteen 
States have the right and have the power, the 
unquestionable and undeniable power, to carry 
on this trade in slaves within these fifteen States 
themselves. We do not interfere with them. 
We have no right to interfere with them. They 
are sovereign on that subject, and are exempt 
from our control. But when it comes to the 
federal Union — the Union which is the govern- 
ment over us all — there their right to trade in 
slaves in the Territories of the United States has 
ceased, because the constitution is a constitution 
to establish justice, not injustice ; to maintain 
peace not by force, but by the consent of the 
governed, and to perpetuate, not the curse of 
slavery, but the blessings of liberty to ourselves 
and to our posterity forever. This Union is this 
nation — is this empire of thirty millions of peo- 
ple. It is not made for mere trade, much less for 
trade in the bodies and souls of men. It is 
made for the happiness of the people, for the 
development of the material resources of the 
country, to guarantee peace and safety to every 
citizen in this broad land, and to guarantee him 



in the full enjoyment of all his rights of life, 
liberty and property. It opens to him this vast 
continent for the pursuit of happiness, and by 
its power acting on the governments of the Old 
World and of the New, it makes the American 
citizen the citizen of the world. [Applause.] This 
Union of ours gives us a property in the tombs 
at Quincy and Mount Vernon, and in the battle 
fields of Bunker Hill, and Saratoga, and York- 
town. Are these all to be surrendered if any State 
among us should become discontented because 
they are not able to secure all the special advan- 
tages from the Union that seem to be desirable? 
If the Union is to be dissolved, I have shown 
that the way is not very easy to do it. Now let 
me know who is to do it ? It has been said that 
Alabama and Missouri, and Mississippi and Loui- 
siana, and Florida and South Carolina, will go 
out, and then the Union will be dissolved. They 
say, " you will not try to take us back ; you will 
not dare to imbrue your hands in brothers' 
blood to re-establish by force of conquest a 
Union which we have repudiated and dissolved." 
They are right. "We do not propose to do any 
such thing. In the first plac? those States are 
not going out. If they go out they go out for a 
cause, and that cause is to save slavery. Well, 
what are they in for, but to have slavery saved 
for them by the federal Union ? Why would 
they go out, for they could not maintain and de- 
fend themselves against their own slaves ? We 
would see them march up, one after another, 
under the black flag, trampling under foot those 
stars and stiipes of ours. If it were possible I 
should like to see the experiment of old Massa- 
chusetts going out and endeavoring to carry 
Plymouth rock with her, or I would like to see 
New York go out and carry the harbor and Cats- 
kill mountains with her. What do you think 
the rest of the States would say ? I think they 
would fold their arms and see whether they be- 
haved themselves, and they would let them stay 
out just as long as they behaved themselves. 
Well, what would they do if they got out and 
did not behave themselves. If New York should 
levy taxes and imposts, and instead of paying 
them into the national exchequer should keep 
them on her own account, that would not be be- 
having well. Those who think that for nothing 
or for any imaginary cause, the Union is to be 
dissolved or destroyed, have no idea of the na- 
ture of the government under which they live, 
or of the character of the people. Go on, then, 
and do your duty. The lesson of public life is 
one that is easy to be learned. It resolves itself 
simply into this — to ascertain, as you always can, 
what, in the day in which you live, is the great 
work for the welfare of mankind ; do that work 
fearlessly, in the love of your fellow men and in 
the fear of God, and the Union will survive you 
and me and your posterity for a thousand years. 
[Applause,] 



46 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT LEAVENA^^ORTH, KANSAS 
September 38, 1860. 



Mr. Seward returned from Lawrence to Lea- 
venworth on Thursday, hoping to escape any 
further attention in the latter town, but he was 
not so fortunate. The Wide Awakes mustered 
in considerable numbers, and with music, trans- 
parencies and flaming torches, marched to the 
Planters' Hotel, where there was already a large 
crowd assembled. Mr. Seward could not resist 
the demand made upon him, and so he, though 
unwillingly, left his room, walked down to the 
parlor and stepping through the open window 
presented himself, all unattended, on the stand 
which had been constructed in front of the 
building. His appearance was greeted with en- 
thusiastic cheers, and ho found himself, like Mr. 
Douglas, " betrayed" into making a speech. 

He indulged in anticipation of the time when 
on this broad continent there was to be no othea 
power than that of the United States, and des- 
canted on the importance of their position mid- 
way between the two oceans. One or more great 
States, he said, must rise here in the valley of 
the Mississippi. It might have been, and would 
have been, if her people had been as wise as you 
are, that State which lies opposite you on the 
Missouri river. I do not know that the State 
of Missouri will not yet be that great State, for 
there is a hope, there is assurance, that Missouri 
will ultimately, taught by the instruction you 
are giving her and the example you are setting 
her, be a free State. She has soil as fertile, skies 
as genial, as those with which Grod has blessed 
any portion of the earth. That State will ulti- 
mately be one of the greatest, mo>t respected, 
most prosperous, most honored States in this 
American tjnion. 

Still he treated of the fundamental condi- 
tions of a State and of a republic, which con- 
ditions are simply these: securing to every man 
equal and exact justice, and the fullest opportu- 
nity for the improvement of his own condition 
and the elevation of his own character by the 
laws and customs that we establish. In this 
respect you are ahead of Missouri, ahead of Ne- 
braska, ahead of Iowa, and ahead of every State 
in the American Union, by reason of the great 
injustice suffered, the great wrongs endured, and 
the great resolution and courage with which you 
have overcome them all. Freedom in the Terri- 



tories of the United States is to all the rest of 
the world a mere abstraction. But it has been 
your misfortune that your Territory was made 
the theatre of a conflict, the theatre of the trial 
of that "irrepressible conflict" — [laughter and 
cheers] — a conflict of mind with mind, voice with 
voice, vote with vote, of bullet against bullet, and 
of cannon against cannon. [Loud and tumultu- 
ous cheering.] You have acquired the education 
of freedom b}' practical experience. You have 
the start of all the other States. If there is a 
people in any part of the world I ought to cher- 
ish with enduring respect, with the warmest grat- 
itude and with the deepest interest, assuredly it 
is the people of Kansas ; for, but for the practi- 
cal trial they have given to the system which I 
had adopted, but for the vindication at so much 
risk and so much cost of their highest rights un- 
der the law, I, for one, would have gone to my 
grave a disappointed man, a false teacher in the 
estimation of the American people. [Applause.] 
Yours is the thirty-first of thirty-four States of 
the Union which I have visited for the purpose 
of knowing their soil, their skies and their peo- 
ple. I have visited, in the course of my lifetime, 
more than three-fourths of the civilized nations 
of the world; and of all the States and nations 
which I have seen, that people which I hold to 
be the wisest, the worthiest and the best, is the 
people of this little State. [Applause.] The 
reason of it is the old proverb that " Handsome 
is that handsome does." If other nations have 
higher education, greater refinement, and have 
cultivated the virtues and refinements of civilized 
life more than you have, I have yet to see the 
nation or the people that has been able, in its 
very inception, in its infancy, in its very oi-gani- 
zation, to meet the shock of the aristocratic s)'"s- 
tem, through which other nations have been in- 
jured or ruined, to repel all attacks, and to come 
out before the world in the attitude of a people 
who will not, under any form of persuasion, se- 
duction or intimidation, consent, any one of 
them, to be a slave, any one of them to make a 
slave, any one of them to hold a slave, or any foot 
of their territory to be trod by a slave, or by a 
man who is not equal to every other man in the 
eye of the law. [Applause.] 



m 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT ATCHISOlSr, KAISTSAS 
September 28, 1860 



Mr. Seward was warmly welcomed by the citi- 
zens and ladies of Atchison, and among others 
by Mr. Fairchild, the Mayor, himself a demo- 
crat, and by General Pomeroy. He was intro- 
duced to the assemblage by Mr. Martin, and 
made a very effective speech. Referring to the 
apology made by Mr. Martin, for the inadequa- 
cy of the reception, he said that they might 
judge of what he himself thought of it, when he 
declared to them that his welcome bore all the 
impress of those that he had seen given in other 
countries to hereditary despots. Compared with 
other demonstrations in the Territory, this was 
unsurpassed. [Atchison was one of the *' bor- 
der ruffian" towns on the Missouri river. — Rep.] 
He said he had tried to avoid all this demonstra- 
tion, which only tended to make him misunder- 
stood, for the world might think that in coming 
to Kansas he came to receive honors, instead of 
coming to learn what was necessary to enable 
him to perfoim his duty to her citizens better 
than he had heretofore been able to do. 

I find, said he, the Territory of Kansas as rich 
as, if not richer, in its soil and in its eviden- 
ces of material prosperity, than any State with 
which I have been acquainted, and I have al- 
ready visited thirty-one of the thirty-four States 
of the Union. In climate I know of none that 
seems to be so desirable. It is now suffering — 
in its southern and western counties more es- 
pecially — the privations of want, falling very 
heavily on its latest settlers, resulting from the 
absence of rain for a period of ten or twelve 
months. I go out of the Territory of Kansas 
with a sadness that hangs over and depresses 
me — not because I have not found the country 
far surpassing all my expectations of its improve- 
ment and cultivation — not because I have not 
found here a prosperous and happy people 
— but because I have found families — some from 
my own State, some from other States and some 
from foreign countries — who were induced — and 
justly and wisely induced — to come to this re- 
gion within the last year or two, and who, hav- 
ing exhausted all their means and all their re- 
sources in establishing homes for themselves, 
have been disappointed in gaining from their 
labor provision for the supply of their wants 

I hope that the tales which I have heard are 
exaggerated, and that families are not actually 
perishing for want in some of the western coun- 
ties of Kansas. I have faith in the complete 
success of your system, and in the prosperity 
and development of the State of Kansas ; I have 
it for the most obvious reason, that if Kansas is 
a failure my whole life has been worse than a 
failure ; but if Kansas shall prove a success — as 
I know it will — then I shall stand redeemed, at 
least in history, for the interest I have taken in 



the establishment of civilization on the banks of 
the Missouri river upon the principles and poli- 
cy which you have laid down. I pray you — ■ 
you who are rich, you who are prosperous — to 
appoint active and careful men to make research- 
es in the Territory for those who are suffering 
by this dreadful visitation of Providence ; to 
take care that the emigrant who came in last 
winter and last spring be not suffered, through 
disappointment and w^ant, to return to the State 
whence he came, carrying back a tale of suffer- 
ing and privation and distress which might re- 
tard for years the development of society here. 
I hope you will not regard this advice of mine 
as being without warrant. I give it for your 
own sake — I give it for the sake of the people of 
Kansas, as well as because ray sympathies have 
been moved by the distress I have seen around 
me. 

If this advice shall be taken in good part, then 
I am free to tell you that in my judgment there 
is not the least necessity for any person leaving 
this Territory, notwithstanding the greatness of 
the calamity that has befallen it. 1 have seen 
whole districts that have produced neither the winter 
wheat, nor the spring ivheat, nor the rye^ nor the 
buckwheat, nor the potatoe, nor the root of any kind; 
yet I have seen on all your prairies, upland and 
bottom land, cattle and horses in great numbers, 
and all of them in most perfect condition ; and I 
am sure that there is a supply of stock in this 
Territory which, if disposed of, would produce 
all that is necessary to relieve every one in the 
Territory. What is required, therefore, is simply 
that you should seek out want where it exists, 
and apply your own surplus means to relieve it. 
If this should fail, and if you should feel it neces- 
sary to apply to your countrymen in the East for 
aid, I will second that appeal — I and the gentle- 
men who have been visiting the country with me 
— and it will not be our fault if we do not send 
back from the East the material comforts that 
will cheer and reanimate those who are depressed 
and suffering. This State, larger than any of the 
old thirteen States, has not one acre that is un- 
susceptible of cultivation ; not one foot that may 
not be made productive of the supplies of the 
wants of human life, comforts and luxuries. The 
question was propounded to me — not of my seek- 
ing — it came before me, because I was in a posi- 
tion where I must meet all questions of this kind 
— it came some six years ago : Do the interests 
of human society require that this land of Kan- 
sas should be possessed by slaveholders and cul- 
tivated with slaves, or possessed and cultivated 
by free men, every one of whom shall own the 
land which he cultivates and the muscles with 
which he tills the earth 1 When I look back at 
that period, only six or seven years ago, it seems 



48 



strange to me that any man living on this conti- 
nent, himself a free man and having children who 
are free, himself a free laborer and having chil- 
dren who must be free laborers, himself earning 
his own subsistence and having children Avho 
must depend on their own efforts for their sup- 
port, should be willing to resign a portion of this 
continent so great, a soil so rich, a climate so ge- 
nial, to the support of African negroes instead of 
white men. 

Africa was not crowded for Kansas. Africa 
has never sent to this country one voluntary 
exile or emigrant, and never will. The sons of 
Africa have lands which for them are more pro- 
ductive, have habits more congenial and skies 
better tempered than yours are. I have sup- 
posed it far better, therefore, to leave the peo- 
ple of Africa where God planted them, on their 
native shores. But the case was different with 
men of my own race — the white men, the blue- 
eyed men, the yellow-haired men of England, of 
Ireland, of Scotland, of France, of Germany, of 
Italy. Ever since this continent was discovered 
oppression in every form has been driving them 
from those lands to seek homes for their subsis- 
tence and support on this continent. There is 
no difference between us all except this : that 
my father was driven out of Europe by want 
and privation some hundred years ago, and 
others some hundred ye§.rs later, and some have 
just come, and tens of thousands, aye, millions, 
have yet to come. We are all exiles directly, or 
represent those who were exiles — all exiles made 
by oppression, superstition and tyranny in Eu- 
rope. We are of one family, race and kindred, 
all here in the pursuit of happiness — all seeking 
to improve our condition — all seeking to elevate 
our character. My sympathies have gone with 
this class of men. My efforts have been, as they 
must always be, to lay open before them the 
vast regions of this continent, to the end that we 
may establish here a higher, a better, and a hap- 
pier civilization than that from which ourselves 
or our ancestors were exiled in foreign lands. 

This land should not only be a land of free- 



dom, a land of knowledge and religion, but it 
should be, above all, a land which, as yet can- 
not be said with truth of any part of Europe or 
any other part of the world, aland of civil li- 
berty — and a land can only be made a land of 
liberty by adopting the principle which has never 
yet obtained in Europe, and which is only to be at- 
tained by learning it from ourselves — that is, that 
every human being, being necessarily born the sub- 
ject of a government, is a member of the State, 
and has a natural right to be a member of the 
State, and that, in the language of the Declara- 
tion of Independence, all men are born equal 
and have inalienable rights to life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness. Some of the States 
were not established on this principle. They 
were established a long time ago, and under cir- 
cumstances which prevented the adoption of this 
principle. For those States, members of our 
Union who have been unable or even unwilling 
to adopt this principle, I have only to say that 
I leave them free to enjoy whatever of happiness, 
and to attain whatever of prosperity, they can 
enjoy and attain with their system. But when I 
am called upon to establish a government for a 
new State, then I demand the application of the 
principles of the Declaration of Independence — 
[applause] — that every man ought to be and 
should be a free man. Society can have but two 
forms by which the individual can defend him- 
self from oppression. One is that which puis the 
musket into his hand and tells him as the last resort 
to defend himself and his liberty. The other is 
that uhich puis into his hand the ballot, and tells 
him in every exigency to defend his rights with the 
ballot. I do mail/tain that in founding a new State 
we have the perfect liberty as well as the perfect right 
to establish a government uhich shall secure every 
man in his rights; or rather, 1 do say that you 
must put into every man^shand — not into the hands 
of one — the ballot ; or put into every man's hand, 
and not into the hands of a. few, the bullet, so that 
every man shall be equal before the law in his power 
as a citizen. All men shall have the ballot, or none; 
all men shall have the bullet, or none. [Applause.] 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT CLEVELAISTD, OHIO, 

OCTOBER 4, 1860. 



Gov. Seward being introduced was received 
with rousing cheers. He spoke as follows : 

Several Republican citizens, of more eastern 
States than this, including myself, have been 
making a tour of observation in the West. We 
have found every reason to believe, and trust 
confidently, that Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, 
Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota, are safe for the 
Republican cause in the coming election. 



[Cheers.] We also know of no Eastern Free 
State that is doubtful. I am reported, as I find, 
to have said at Springfield that I have been urg- 
ed from home to go back to the State of New 
York : This is erroneous. What I did say was, 
that some ill-informed Republicans in the West 
had been alarmed by the reports of coalitions 
formed, or attempted to be formed, by the oppo- 
sition in that State, and asked me whether I 



49 



thought it was neeessaiy to go home and look 
after 1113' owa State. I say now, as I said then, 
that I should go liome when I found any reason 
to beUeve that the Republican majority was in 
any danger of behig reduced below 60,000. I 
liave had no advices of that kind, and no com- 
munications from the State of New York during 
this journey except from a respectable lady re- 
siding at Auburn, who confines herself to taking 
charge of her children and mine, and leaves po- 
litics to take care of themselves. 

Wo have visited Kansas, and I ask your leave 
to bring the condition of that Territory before 
you, for your careful and kind consideration. 
The soil and the skies of Kansas are as propitious 
as any people on earth ever enjoyed — the people 
as free, as true and as brave as any in the world. 
They ai-e suffering severely from a drought so 
great that I think it was scarcely exaggerated 
when they told me they had had no rain in a 
large portion of the Territory for a whole year. 
We found that whole districts had produced less 
vegetable support for human life than are to be 
found in many a garden wliich we have passed 
in coming through the State of Ohio. Districts 
in which the winter wheat, sowed last year, was 
necessarily plowed up and sowed in the spring 
with spring wheat. The spring wheat was plowed 
up and the ground planted with corn. The 
corn proved a failure and was followed with po- 
tatoes. The potatoes were blasted, and followed 
by buckwheat, which also proved a failure. I 
think that this is a true description of the condi- 
tion of tillage of perhaps two-thirds of Kansas. 
Still, there will be no great famine or distress 
there. The occupants who have been there for 
two, three, four or five years are comfortable and 
well-to-do, as appears abundantly from their 
stock, their fences, their dwelling houses — framed 
of wood, and very often substantially and well 
built of brick and stone. Large portions of the 
State are as populous, and exhibit all the signs 
of comfort and thrift, equal to what are found 
even in. Ohio. But there are emigrants who have 
resided there for only a year whose whole means 
have been expended in procuring farms and shel- 
ter, and planting their crops, which have succes- 
sively failed. Many of these are leaving the 
Territory — some say so many as one hundred a 
day. They ought to be relieved, and a very lit- 
tle assistance would enable them to remain there 
and retain their possessions and improvements, 
and resume the culture of their fields, under 
more favorable auspices, next spring. With 
much diffi lence, I beg to commend this subject 
to the ciiizens of Ohio. Perhaps a larger portion 
of the Republicans of Kansas are emigrants from 
Ohio than from any other State. Do not forget 
that Kansas is the most important outpost of the 
Republican army ; that it is yet, on paper at least, 
in a state of siege ; though the enemy has been 
driven out, a treaty of peace and independence 
has not yet been signed. 

Fellow citizens, I am unable to make you what 
is called a speech, for I have left my voice at 
Chicago ; but I will say something, in order, if 
possible, to not altogether disappoint any expec- 
tations which you may entertain. You have 
come togeth T, not for amusement, or to gratify 
passion or prejudice. Each of you, as a citizen 
of the United States, is invested with a portion 
of sovereignty over the greatest and most impor- 
tant nation of the world. Time is divided into 



past, present and the future, but there is in 
truth no present. Each one of us, therefore, 
lives in and for the past, or for the future. The 
worst use of time that could be made is to em- 
ploy it in concerns of the past. The past ought 
to have taken care of itself; if it has not we can 
do nothing to change it. The future, only, is 
subject in any degree to our control and direc- 
tion. The past was the time of tradition ; the 
Revolution of '76, the Republican Revolution of 
1800, the war of 1812, the Tariff controversy, 
the question of the Bank of the United States, 
have passed away, with the generations which 
discussed or acted in them. A man may have 
his opinion upon one or other of those subjects, 
but it leads to no practical conclusion now. Ac- 
tion for the future concerns freedom or slavery 
within the territories of the United States, and 
to discharge our i-esponsibilities well and wisely, 
we must bury our traditions, emancipate oar- 
selves and become free, enlightened and intelli- 
gent men. The Past was for the East — the Fii.- 
ture is for the West. Empire has culminated in 
the East, and is now passing to the West. The 
Past was for Slavery, which at one time was 
practically universal in the East. The Future ir> 
Freedom, which, in the order of Providence, is to 
be universal in the West. 

The change from past Eastern Slavery to fu- 
ture Western Freedom is to be effected simply 
by bringing the mind of the nation to a just ap- 
prehension of what slavery is. Our Fathers in 
the East understood it to be a question simply 
of trade. In their view, while they allowed the 
practice of slavery, they held a slave to be a sub- 
ject of commerce. The Declaration of Indepen- 
dence and the Constitution of the United States, 
announced on the other hand, that slavery is a 
question of human rights. While they left the 
regulation of that subject within the States them- 
selves, they did establish the principle that in 
the common Territories of the United States and 
within the sphere of Federal action, every man 
is a person, a man, a free man, who could nei- 
ther hold another in slavery nor be held in bond- 
age by any other man. The past (since the 
adoption of the Constitution) has been occupied 
with trials to compromise this conflict between 
property in man and the freedom of man, and 
these trials have proved unsuccessful. The fa 
ture demands the settlement of it now by a re- 
turn to the principles of the Declaration of In- 
dependence and the Constitution. This con- 
clusion can be reached only by accepting the 
principle of the political equality of men within 
the exclusive range of the Federal Constitution. 
This is simply a matter of education. It is not 
worth while to spend much time upon this sub- 
ject in trying to convert old men ; they cannot 
last long, and therefore can do little harm. We 
all become settled in our opinions and confirmed 
in our habits as we grow old. The Republican 
party is a party chiefly of the young men. 
Each successive year brings into its ranks an in- 
creasing proportion of the young men of this 
country. 

This is the ground of my hope, of my confi- 
dence, that before this generation shall have pass- 
ed away, the Democratic party will cease to exist; 
and the Republican party, or at least its prin- 
ciples, will be accepted and universally pre- 
vail. If it be true, as the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence asserts, th^t the right of all men tp 



50 



political equality is self-evident, nothing can 
prevent the acknowledgment of tliat fact by the 
generation now rising, since that truth is dis- 
tinctly inculcated now for the first time through 
all the agencies of private and public education. 
The young man who shall reject it will find him- 
self in controversy with the ever-growing senti- 
ment of his countrymen, and the settled public 
opinion of the world. Let hira take heed how 



he enters upon a course which can bring nothing 
but unavailing contention, disappointment and 
regret over the failure of his ambition and of his 
desire for usefulness. Train up your children in 
the belief of this great principle of our Consti- 
tution, and they will secure for themselves the 
satisfaction of leading useful and honorable 
lives, and follow you to your graves with more 
than even filial veneration. 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT BUFEAEO, IST E A:^^ YOUK, 

OCTOBER 5, 1860. 



Fellow Citizens — I understand this demon- 
stration. It is only kindness that makes it 
turbulent. But in order that you may hear a 
voice which has been exercised for five weeks, it 
will be necessary for you to hold your tongues 
and open your ears. I am now within a hundred 
and fifty miles of my home, and I remember that 
" a prophet is not without honor save in his own 
country." So am I not going to prophesy so 
near my own place of residence. I thank you 
sincerely for this welcome of myself and of the 
party with whom I have been traveling in the 
far West. 

I have seen, within a year, all the principal 
people who inhabit the shores of the Mediterra- 
nean ; and within the last five weeks have jour- 
neyed among the population dwelling along the 
Mediterranean of America. I have seen those 
decayed and desolate countries — the sites of the- 
greatest nations of antiquity— now covered with 
ruins and some in a state almost of semi-barbar- 
ism. The chief cause of that decay and desolation 
I believe to have been the existence in those 
countries of human bondage. 

The one great evil which could bring down our 
country to such a level, would be the introduc- 
tion of Slavery to the lands surrounding the 
Mediterranean of America. Therefore it is that 
I have devoted what little talent I possess to pre- 
vent the ban of Slavery from falling upon the 
fertile valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri. 

Having seen many States, I come back to New 
York, prouder of her, and prouder that I belong 
to her, than I was when I left. I estimate her so 
highly, not alone for what she is or has, at home, 
but also for what she is and has in the Great West. 
While I see ai'ound me here, so many generous 
and noble men endeavoring to maintain her in 
her proud position, I have also found, all along 
the shores of ti;e great lakes, along the banks of 
the great riverSj and even at t]ie foot of the 
Rocky Mountains^ children of tlie State of New 
York, almost as numerous as at home, Wiscon- 
sin, Michigan, Illinois and Kansas, are ail daugh- 
ters of New York, so is California, and i&os^e 



States have been formed under her auspices, 
then there were at the beginning of the Union. 
Emigrants from Erie county, from Chautauqua, 
from Cattaraugus, from Oswego, and from all 
the counties of this great State, people the West. 
It was a son of New York who first applied 
steam to locomotion ; a citizen of New York, and 
also its chief magistrate, who began and perfect- 
ed the Erie Canal, and over that canal the stream 
of emigration has flowed which has founded new 
States. It has carried, sometimes, in a day the 
people of a Avestern town, a county in a few 
weeks, and a State in two or three years. New 
York has built the West. 

But I am, perhaps, speaking in too general 
terms. Doubtless the spirit which animates you 
at present, is roused in regard to the coming 
election. It will gladden you when I say in re- 
lation to the state of the West, and I have had 
assurances there which leave no doubt that it will 
give its vote for Lincoln. I have seen him at his 
own home, and I have now to say, as I said be- 
fore I went West, that he is a man eminently 
worthy of the support of every honest voter, and 
well qualified to discharge the duties of the 
Chief Magistracy. Above all, he is reHable ; and 
I repeat at the foot of Lake Erie, what I said at the 
head of it ; that if it had fallen to me to name a 
man to be elected as next President of the United 
States, I would have chosen Abraham Lincoln. 

I have promised out West that the State of 
New York will give him 60,000 majority in No- 
vember. Am I right in this ? [A voice, *' dou- 
ble it! "J Then you are to multiply that by two, 
are you ? Well, that is no more than you ought 
to do, and if you keep " wide awake " it is no 
moi*e than you can do. 

Now, my friends, I am deliberating on this es- 
timate of yours, and I wish to know what you 
have to say for Erie county. What majority will 
Erie county give ? [Divers answers were made 
to this query ; " 5,000 " seemed to be the preva- 
lent figure ; others said, 2,500 out of the city of 
Buffalo,] Mr. Seward : Aye, you count majorities 
in the rural districts. That is right and safe too. 



51 



It is very fortunate that whatever may be the 
way with ihe population on the sidewalks, the 
rural districts are safe for freedom. Why, gen- 
tlemen, you couldn't take any man three months 
from Main street, out into the free open country, 
without converting him from Democracy and 
making him so that he would never think of vo- 
ting for a Democratic candidate, or a two-faced 
candidate, or a candidate with half a dozen prin- 
ci];les. Well ! we'll see what we can do with the 
cities this time. When the cities begin to find. 
out that they are not going to rule the country, 
they will conclude, perhaps, that it is better that 
the country should rule them. 

It is very strange that Irishmen and Germans 
and Swedes, so long as they remain on the side- 



walks, should wi-h to be ruled by men in the in- 
terest of the slave power. [ Cries, " It is not so 
here."] But you say, it is not so here. I have 
been West and have seen foreigners there also 
who did not wish to be ruled by slaveholders. 

But I have already talked more than I had in- 
tended, and must slop. [A voice, " What about 
Kansas?"] You wish to hear about Kansas? 
I will tell you. What is the population of Buf- 
falo ? [A voice, " 81,000."] Vv^ell, whenever the 
citv of Buffalo shall have come to be inhabited 
b„v''lOO,000, or 103,000— which is just the popu- 
lation of Kansas — as virtuous, as wise, as brave, 
as fearless as the 103,000 of Kansas, there will 
be an end of the '• irrepressible conflict." Good 
night. 



..#.♦■ * ». 



GOVERNOR SEWARD'S 

SPEECH AT LA"V^TlE]SrCE, KAIsTSAS, 

SEPTEMBER 26. 1860. 



Fellow Citizens — A long cherished desire of 
mine is fulfilled ; at last, a long deferred duty is 
about to be paid — the desire of my heart to see 
the people of Kansas — the duty that I felt I owed 
to the people of Kansas, to see them in their 
own homes and in their own houses. I have 
visited your chief cities Leavenworth and Law- 
rence — where the army of mercenaries sent by 
the Slave States battered down the hotel, under 
an indictment and conviction in a court of the 
United States as a nuisance, because it sheltered 
the freemen who had come here to see Freedom 
established in Kansas. And I have looked, 
also, upon the Constitution Hall, in Topeka, 
where the army of the United States, for the 
first time in the history of our nation, dispersed 
a lawful and peaceable assembly of citizens of 
the United States, convened to counsel upon the 
best means of protecting their lives, their pro- 
perty and sacred honor. You, people of Kan- 
sas, whom I have not been able to see in your 
homes, have come up here to greet me, from the 
valleys of the Kansas, the Big Blue, and the Ne- 
osho, and from all your plains and valleys. 

I seem not to have journeyed hither, but to 
have floated across the sea, — the prairie sea, — 
under bright autumnal skies, wafted by genial 
breezes into the havens where I wished to be. 
I am not sorry that my visit has occurred at this 
particular time, so sad in its influence, when na- 
ture, that sends its rains upon the unjust as well 
as the just, has for a year withdrawn its genial 
showers from the soil of Kansas. It is well to 
see one's friends in darkness and sadness, as well 
as in the hour of joy. 

I have beheld the scenes of your former con- 
flicts. I have also looked upon that beautiful 



eminence on the banks of the Kansas river, 
; where Lecompton sits a lonely widow, [cheers 
j and laughter,] desolate and mourning, her am- 
! bitious structures showing how high is the am- 
I bition of Slavery, and their desolation showing 
how easy, after all, is her downfall. I would 
have seen more of Kansas, if I had not been in- 
terrupted and impeded in my course through 
the State by the hospitality and kindness of the 
people, which I could not turn aside. I have 
been excessively retentive at Lea,venworth and 
Topeka, refusing to open my lips, unless my 
jaws were pried open, because I do not like to 
say things by piecemeal. 

I desire to speak openly to you, in the broad 
daylight, in the hearing of the women as well as 
men of Kansas ; and here, where I have renew- 
ed the memories of the contest waged upon this 
soil, while I see around me the broken imple- 
ments with which that contest was wagged by 
the aggressors under the plea of popular sove- 
reignty, which left the people perfectly free to 
do just as they please, subject to the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, which they were left 
perfectly free to interpret as they pleased, while 
the authorities at Washington have never been 
able to interpret it. 

When I look at field after field, and cabin after 
cabin, and church after church, and school house 
after school house, where but six years ago was 
the unbroken range of savages, 1 am prepared 
here — not expecting to escape being heard on 
the Pacific as well as the Atlantic coast — I am 
prepared to declare, and do declare you people 
of Kansas, the most intelligent, and the bravest 
and most virtuous i)eople of the United States. 
[Applause.] That is the most intelligent, and 



52 



bravest and most virtuous people, wliicli can 
take the banner of Human Freedom when it is 
trailed in the dust by tiie government of its 
clioice, and can and does raise it aloft and pro- 
tect it, and bear it to success and honor — and 
that without bloodshed and violence. 

People of Kansas ! you are at once the young- 
est, the newest people — the newest Stale, as 
well as the youngest of all the thirty-four Amer- 
ican States ; you are the poorest in wealth, the 
least favored with political power, for you are 
nearly disfranchised — and yet you are the most 
inflexible, and the most constant. The two 
richest States in the Union are Massachusetts 
and New York, but they are so merely because 
they are the freest, the wisest, and the most 
liberty-loving States of the Union. I apprehend 
that you scarcely understand yourselves the im- 
portance of the position which you hold in this 
Republic. You will perhaps be surprised, when 
I tell you that the secret of all the interest I 
have ielt in you has been merely this : that you 
occupy a pivotal position in the Reptiblic of the 
United States, with regard to Slavery and Free- 
dom. There is no contest, no difierence on this 
subject, along the line of the Northeastern 
States, for they are hostile to Slavery. There is 
no diftereuce on the line of the Southern States, 
for they are in favor of Slavery. But there has 
been a severe strife between Freedom and Slave- 
ry, for the establishment of Freedom or Slavery, 
in all the wide region reaching from th^ Missouri 
to the Pacific Ocean. If Freedom was to tri- 
umph in this contest, there was no point where 
slie could expect to meet the enemy, except on 
the very place she has met it — here. And if 
ycu had been lalse. Slavery would have swept 
along through the Indian Territory, Texas, and 
the whole of the country, including the Rocky 
Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean. 

California was imperfectly secured to Free- 
dom, and with a compromise. Y'ou opened a 
new campaign here, to reclaim what was given 
up in that already broken compromise, and it 
has been crowned with a complete victory. 
Henceforth, the battle is ended ; henceforth, the 
emigrant from the Eastern States, from Germa- 
ny and Ireland, the free laborer, in short, from 
every land on the earth, when he reaches the 
Missouri river, will enter on a broad land of im- 
partial liberty. 

He can safely pursue his way under the ban- 
ner of Freedom to the foot of the Rocky Moun- 
tains; and there the hosts of freemen from the j 
western coast will unite and join under the same 
banner, extending JN'orth and South. Every- 
where, except in Missouri, is a land of Freedom. 
Missouri stands an island of Slavery in the midst 
of a broad ocean of Liberty. Y'ou occupy not 
only the pivotal position, but it was your fortune 
to attempt this great enterprise in behalf of 
Freedom at a critical period for mankind. Sla- 
very was then just 2'00 years old, in the United 
States. In the year 1776, our fathers gave bat- 
tle to Slavery ; they declared war against it, and 
pledged their lives and sacred honor, in the ser- 
vice against it. Practically, it was to be de- 
stroyed peaceably, under the Constitution of the 
United States. Those good men believed it 
would reach its end long before this period ; but 
the people became demoi-alized. The war went 
back, b"ik, back, until 1854 — until all guaranties 
of Freedom, in every part of the United States 



were abandoned, and Kansas, that had for forty 
years been perfectly free from the footsteps of 
the slave, was pronounced by the highest power 
of the Government as much a Slave State as 
South Carolina. The flag of the United States 
was made the harbinger, not of Freedom, but of 
Human Bondage. 

It was at this crisis that the people of Kansas 
appealed on the stage, reviled and despised, and 
lifted the banner of Liberty on Mgh, and bore it 
manfully forward, defied all force, and yet coun- 
teracted peaceably all the efibrts made to subdue 
them. In three years they not only secured 
Freedom in Kansas, btrt in all the Territory of 
the United States, 

Freedom made Kansas as free as Massachu- 
setts, and made the Federal Government, on and 
alter the 4th of March next, the patron of Free- 
dom — what it was at the beginning. Y'ou have 
made Freedom national, and Slavery sectional. 
Had you receded after your first conditional or 
provisional Government was dispersed at Tope- 
ka, by cannon and bayonet ; had you surrender- 
ed and accepted the Lecompton Constitution ; 
had you even abandoned the Wyandott Consti- 
tution, at any stage of the battle, it would have 
destroyed the cause of Freedom, not only in 
Kansas, but also throughout the whole Union. 

I know I sha 1 be justified in history ; shall I 
not be justified by cotemporaries ? Wise, best, 
bravest of citizens ; no other hundred thousand 
people in the United States have contributed as 
much for the cause of Freedom, as Kansas. 
Before this peojjle, then, appearing for the first 
time, I bow myself, as I have never done be- 
fore to any other people, in profound reverence. 
[Sensation.] I salute you with gratitude and 
attection. 

Fellow citizens, my time here, as well as 
yours, is brief. It is but few of many subjects 
upon which we can even touch. As to the least 
important subject of all, myself, I give you, in 
one word, my sincere and iieartfelt thanks. I 
had formed my opinion of you from your past 
conduct and history. I have not been disap- 
pointed in 3'our kindness. For all that remains 
to me, give yourselves no trouble. Freedom is 
saved an<i assured to California and Kansas, 
and therefore assured to the future states in the 
Ptocky Mountains. Ii I may, indeed, hope that 
my poor name will find a place in the history of 
California and Kansas, then all the ambition I 
have ever cherished is more than abundantly 
satisfied. 

The second consideration to which I would 
advert for a moment, is this sadness which lies 
like a i>al] over a large part of the Territory of 
Kansas — the result of the withdrawal of the 
rain for a period so long as to excite apprehen- 
sions of a famine. 

I have carefully examined the condition of 
Kansas — ^the river bottoms and the prairies, and 
my conclusion is — not more from the condition 
of the crops, than from the character of the peo- 
ple — that there will be no famine in Kansas, 
because there is wealth and credit enough in 
Kansas to carry you through more than one year 
like this. You will take care of this credH, and 
retain it, so far as possible. If this will not do, 
then appeal to your friends in the East, and they 
will not see you suffer. I myself will do what I 
can for you. Be of good cheer. Sufler your- 
selves not to be discouraged. There are cattle 



53 



enough on your thousand hills, if sold — althougli 
it is a fearful sacrifice — to carry you through 
and sustain you daring the winter, and still 
come out in the spring with milch cows and 
working oxen. And we who are here — coming 
from Slates whence emigration flows, and from 
the Atlantic States, where emigration is received 
and sent onward — will all do our share to direct 
emigration to Kansas, assuring them from our 
own observation that it is a climate as salubrious 
as any in the world, and a soil as rich as any 
the sun ever shone upon. This is a smiling and 
fair dominion, and we think, were we set back 
twenty or thirty years, the yjlace of all others 
that we would seek in the United States would 
be the plains of Kansas. [Applause.] 

One other consideration. When we see be- 
fore us the transactions of this day, do they not 
illustrate the subject of the " irrepressible con- 
flict 1" [Cheers and laughter.] Did not our 
forefathers, in 1787, settle this whole question, 
and, by an ordinance, put at rest forever the 
question of Freedom and Slavery in the United 
States 1 Certainly they did. Did they not, in 
1820. settle this conflict forever ? Did they not 
declare that all north of 36 deg. 30 lat., and 
west of the Missouri river should be given up 
to Freedom 1 Certainly they did. Was it not 
settled finally a third time in 1850, when Kan- 
sas and Nebraska were still saved to Freedom, 
and all lying west of them ? AVas it not settled 
a f urth time in 1854, when it was ordained that 
the people of Kansas were free to choose Free- 
dom or Slavery for themselves, subject to the 
Constitution of the United States ? Was it not 
settled for the fifth time, when the Lecompton 
Constitution was adopted by one scratch of the 
pen of the President of the United States and the 
Supreme Court — and this became a land of Slave- 
ry? 

A Voice : We did not take that government, 

Mr. Seward : You didn't take it — that is just 
what I was going to say. 

Why was not Slavery settled by all these set- 
tlements ? For no other reason than because 
the conflict was irrepressible. But you deter- 
mined, in your struggle for Kansas, that she 
shall be forever free ; and that settles the question. 

A Voice : K is not settled yet. There's New 
Mexico. 

Mr. Seward : My friend tells me it is not set- 
tled yet, but it is settled in Kansas and for Kan- 
sas. In New Mexico they tried to settle it in 
favor of Slavery, but they now find out it is irre- 
pressible there. I think you will find that the 
whole battle was settled to the deliverance of 
Kansas, and that henceforth Freedom will be tri- 
umphant in all the Territories of the United 
States. 

And yet, while this is clear to these intelligent, 
practical and sensible men who have gone 
through the problem, what a contrast is seen 
here to what is occurring in other parts of the 
United States, where they suppose, because they 
are older, they are so much wiser ; where tliey 
believe me still as false a prophet as Mohammed. 
In Pennsylvania they have not yet made up their 
minds that there is any conflict at all, much less 
that it is irrepressible. In the Southern States 
they are actually organising a militia against the 
freemen who are establishing Freedom in Kan- 
sas and New Mexico, as if the settlers in Kansas 
were no wiser than they are, and would seek to 



propagate Freedom by the sword. When free- 
men want to make a Territory free, they give it 
ballot boxes, and schoolhouses and churches ; 
and Slavery will never triumph where these are 
first established. 

But to go a little deeper into the subject. In 
1776 and 1787, there were wise men administer- 
ing the G-overnment of the United States ; and 
if you look into their sayings, you will see they 
had all found out that this Republic was to be 
the home of an ever-increasing people, so free, 
so proud, so wise, so vigorous, that they could 
not be confined in the old thirteen States ; they 
saw that this Republic was to be the home of 
free men, of free labor, and not slave labor. So, 
they set apart all the Territory within their reach, 
{. e., all they then had control over — for Free- 
dom and for free emigration. Now, contrast 
that which was wisely done in 1787 with what ac- 
tually happened in 1850 ! In 1820 it was found 
that the population of the United States had 
crossed the Mississippi. Then what was neces- 
sary was, to provide exactly the same kind of 
government for the Territory west of the Missis- 
sippi, as had been provided for the country east 
of it ; so that, when the government should 
be extended to the Pacific, all should be free. 
Could anything have been wiser than for Gov- 
ernment in 1850 to have given Freedom to 
these Territories ? But it did not. They had 
previously given Missouri to Slavery, and said 
Freedom might take the rest ; but now they 
wished to block up free labor by the barrier of 
slave Missouri. Could anything have been more 
absurd than to thus attempt to stay the course 
of freemen ? Either free labor must go out of 
the United States, or it must go round Missouri 
to Kansas and New Mexico. It did go round for 
a short season, but then it broke their barriers, 
and passed through the very garrison of the slave 
power. 

There were long ago good and brave men who 
foretold this result. There was .John Quincy 
Adams, who remonstrated against the extension 
of -Slavery as political suicide. 

There were Henry W. Taylor, James Tall- 
madge, and peerless among them all, Rufus 
King, who declared in the Senate of the United 
States, that the Slave Power in Missouri would 
prove a mockery ; that this land was for liberty; 
and that the Slave Power would repent in sack- 
cloth and ashes. But these good men were over- 
ruled. Missouri and Arkansas came into the 
Union with Slavery. And for what reason 1 It 
was because the slaveholders had property — 
capital which must not be confiscated, even to 
prevent Slavery from being established over as 
large a domain as half of Europe. This was 
the reason the Federal Government determined 
to secure their slaves to the capitalists of Mis- 
souri. What capital had Missouri in slaves that 
was saved at that time ? All the slaves in Mis- 
souri at that time, were exactly 10,220 in num- 
ber — and I was born a slaveholder, and know 
something of the value of slaves, at that time 
three hundred dollars a head, including the old 
and young, the sick and decrepid, which made 
the total value of the slaves in Missouri, in 
1820, $3,066,000. Arkansas then had 1,600 
slaves, worth $480,000. The whole capital of 
slaves in Missouri and Arkansas was about §3,- 
500,000, but to save that capital in negroes, the 
great compromise of 1850 was made, and Kansas 



54 



given up to Slavery. Three million five hundred 
thousand dollars was a large sum, but nobody- 
then or ever proposed to confiscate it. They were 
left free to sell their slaves ; they were at liberty 
to keep them, so only that they should import 
no more. There was no need of confiscating the 
slaves in Missouri any more than there was in 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jer- 
sey and Pennsylvania, so this $3,500,000 was 
never in jeopardy. 

Now then, fellow citizens, even if it had been 
confiscated, how small a sacrifice of property it 
was, weighed against the incalculable blessing 
of Freedom over the American continent. Look 
now at the advantages of their success, and see 
how unavailing are the contrivances of politi- 
cians, and even of nations, to comiteract and 
control the great moving principle of the age. 
Who would have thought, and who now, of the 
■wisest men in the Slave States and many from 
the other States, can believe that by making 
Missouri a Slave State in 1820, forty years after- 
wards, when the canals of New York and Penn- 
sylvania were burdened with commerce, when 
steamers dotted all our inland lakes and rivers, 
when teachers and preachers were abroad 
through the land, that they could make a Slave 
State out of Kansas ? They tried it, and what 
have they got? They have got Slavery in Mis- 
souri and Arkansas ; Fieedom in Kansas, and 
practically in New Mexico, in Utah and Califor- 
nia. That is what comes from attempting to 
bind up the decrees of Providence in flaxen 
hands by human skill. ["Applause.] Why did 
their attempt fail 1 It failed because society has 
its rights and its necessities. It v.-as just as ne- 
cessary that men should move out of Massachu- 
setts and New York and the Western States, and 
Missouri even, into the Territoi'ies, as it is neces- 
sary that Kansas and other Territories should 
receive them wlien they have come. It was just 
as necessary that the exile of Europe should 
have a place where he was perfectly free to have 
no slaves. The movement of the age is quicken- 
ed by the agency of mind and of inventions ; all 
the operations of trade, tlie arts and mauufoc- 
tures, are accelerated by mechanical skill. Who 
thinks now of drawing himself to town with a 
pair of mules ? The steam engine carries him 
there with less cost than he could walk or go on 
wagons. All the implements with which work 
and husbandry are done, are the product of me- 
chanical skill. Every farmer sees that by the 
improvements made in the implements for culti- 
vating the soil, every year he is able to dispense 
with the services of one more laborer, who be- 
comes himself an independent farmer. 

Europe has been in a state of j:oramotion for 
more than sixty years, and still is. Ireland was 
bound to .seek relief ; G-ermaiiy was over popu- 
lated , and must have an outlet for her energy 
and labor. What madness and folly, then, that 
tlii' statpsmen of 1820 should open this country 
to Slavery, and instead of securing it teeming 
with wealth and abundant cultivation, have it 
abandoned to the product of negroes at $1,500 a 
liead! [Laughter,] It is because I speak so 
plainly of these things that some believe me not 
a very conservative man. 

I think you are wiser than your fathers, where- 
ever you may have come from. I had a father 
who was a very vise man, but I think I should 
"be unworthy of him, had I not sought to improve 



my better opportunities to become a wiser man 
than he. It would have been much better 
for Missouri and Arkansas could they have fore- 
seen the consequence of their action. The 
consequence of their embracing Slavery is that 
the tide of emigration in ] 820, which would na- 
turally have come up the Mississippi river was 
driven round into other regions. Instead of en- 
tering at New Orleans, it sought the ports of 
New York and Quebec, peo))led the Provinces 
of Canada and the line of the Northern Lakes. 
There are three millions of settlers in the Pro- 
vinces which Slavery in Missouri sent round 
there. This same tide of emigration peopled 
Northern Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan, and 
thence passed west to Iowa, Nebraska and Kan- 
sas. Missouri has thus lost from her soil all 
this population. At last the mass of emigration 
got to be so dense that it could not divide and 
spread itself, so making a great rush, it swept 
through Missouri, through the very strongholds 
of Slavery. There is not within the longitude 
of my voice probably one man, if Missouri had 
been wise, and had not driven emigration from 
its natural course, that would ever have set foot 
on the soil of Kansas. There is population 
enough in Kansas now to make Missouri a great 
State. But Missouri does not want to be a great 
State. She prefers to wait and be a Slave State. 
[Laughter.] She has no affection for the people 
of the North, but a great afl'ection for the people 
of the South. She has no affection for free la- 
bor, but a great afiection for slave labor. She 
has no free speech ; she is satisfied to have what 
she may say, or may not, controlled by the Slave 
Power. This is a sad case for Missouri, but not 
hopele-s. She must look for deliverance to Kan- 
sas, which Missouri at first overrun and subju- 
gated, and which Missouri refused to let come 
into tlae Union, but which is drawing emigration 
through Missouri, and opening the way, and 
marking out the very course, and inviting Mis- 
souri on, and calling upon Eastern capitalists to 
open a national highway to Pike's Peak and 
California. Missouri to-day is richer by mil- 
lions on millions by the settlement of Kansas by 
free men. All her hopes of competition with 
the free Northern States are based upon what 
you are doing, and can do, and will do, to make 
a Pacific railroad through to the Pacific ocean. 

Never was policy of any State more suicidal ; 
for either she is to be forever a slave State, as 
she desires to be, or she had better have been 
free from the beginning. If she is a Slave State, 
she must be a planting State merely, and the 
value of her land would be near'y worthless — 
for on an average the value of land in a free State 
is exactly three-fold the value of land in a slave 
State. Then, if Missouri wants to be a Slave 
State, the wisest thing she can do is to do on the 
west what she has done on the east — i. e., to con- 
sent to be surrounded with free, prosperous States. 

These free States which you are buildingin 
Kansas and Nebraska, are showing and opening 
the true national highway to the Pacific Ocean. 
You are producing around Missouri the influen- 
ces which they dread, and call abolitionising. I 
don't know any way in which such an o})eration 
can be done with so much quietness, as to go 
round her, and leave her to abolitionise herself. 
She will do it, too, because Missouri has got capi- 
tal, and she will find out that if she is a slave 
State and Kansas free, Kansas, in twenty years, 



55 



will send more members to Congress than Mis- 
souri — and people, though slaveholders don't like 
to give up political power. 

Another lesson which this occasion teaches us, 
is instructive in an eminent degree. When Mis- 
souri, in 1820, compelled Congress to admit her 
as a slave State, and in 1854 to abrogate the Mis- 
souri Compromise, and in 1856 drove all freemen 
from Kansas, in order to have Slavery in Kansas, 
she did not see how futile would be her efforts, 
Missouri obtained these concessions for Slavery 
from the General G-overnment, not because the 
people of the United States love Slavery, but be- 
cause they love the Union. 

But all the efforts of the slave power were de- 
feated by bands of emigrants from New England, 
from New Yoi'k and other Eastern States, from 
Germany and Ireland — who came up the Mis- 
souri river, fearless of cannons, and found the 
slaveholders here armed; and they drove them 
out of the Territory, and established what is 
called an "Abolition" Territory — making it a 
place for connection by the " Underground Rail 
Road" with every State. Who would have be- 
lieved that this could have been done, and that 
we should have met here to-day to celebrate it 
with all kinds of demonstrations — by the firing 
of cannon, by dinners and balls — and the Union 
be just as safe now as it was before ? [Cheers.] 

Another consideration. It is not our choic^e, 
fellow citizens, that our lot as a people is cast 
.upon a continent, and that we are so constituted 
that in spite of ourselves we must become, soon- 
er or later, the possessors of the whole continent 
of North America, from Hudson's Bay to the 
Gulf of Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic 
coast. France and Spain and Great Britain, who 
formerly occupied vast possessions on this conti- 
nent, have been gradually giving way, retiring. 
Every year they are weaker, and it is only a 
question of fifty or one hundred years, before we 
shall be masters of the American Confederacy or 
Republic, over all this. 

Now, a government which is to be extended 
over a continent needs wealth ; it needs riches. 
A great government needs wealth in proportion 
to its extent ; its people must have wealth as an 
element of their happiness and prosperity. It is 
utterly contemptible and ridiculous to say, that 
the continent of North America, instead of being 
peopled by free men, who are willing to take it 
at forty acres apiece and enrich it, — instead of 
this, to turn oft' all these free laborers, and get 
slaves from Africa at two hundred dollars a 
head. What wealth have they in the Slave 
States ? I much mistake if the people of Kansas 
would, ten years hence, exchange their wealth 
for that of the Old Dominion — slaves included. 
Great nations require something more than 



wealtn ; they need intelligence, vigor and en- 
ergy among the people. You are to-day planted 
here, where, if, as they apprehend, the slaves be- 
come discontented, and the people of the slave 
States are to be protected, you are the very men 
upon whom they must rely for that protection ; 
you are the men to defend them ; you must also 
raise the means to defend the national flag upon 
every sea, and over all this continent. Give men 
freedom ; then every freeman will give you a re- 
turn — an equivalent for it ; deny them that, and 
every man becomes an alien, an enemy, under 
the Government. You remember how feeble and 
defenceless we Free State men were ten years 
ago : you see now that we are established in Kan- 
sas — upon the Pacific ocean in the centre of the 
continent , and we might almost say that — 
" We are monarchs of all we survey." 

This success, this power, has been obtained — 
how ? It has been obtained amid reproach, in- 
vective, against force, fraud, and the power of 
the Federal Government. This success will soon 
be made still more apparent by the election of 
Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency. [Cheers.] 
And this victory has been built upon nothing ex- 
cept those smooth, round pebbles with which 
we laid the foundations — and the storms of earth 
and. hell shall not prevail against it. 

It reminds me of that beautiful island of Capri, 
on which the rocks are piled in native deform- 
ity, but in native strength, upon whose summits 
I found the ruins of the palaces of Domitiau and 
Nero. Yet when I entered a cavern on the 
shore, I found that the whole Island rested on a 
foundation of coral. 

These are the considerations which present 
themselves to me on coming among you. I have 
kept nothing back. Henceforth, if my confi- 
dence in the stability of the American Union 
wavers, I shall come here to learn that the Union 
is stronger than human ambition, because it is 
founded in the afiection of the American people. 
If ever I shall waver in my affection for Free- 
dom, I shall come up here and renew it — here 
under the inspiration of one hundred thousand 
freemen, saved from Slavery. Henceforth, these 
shall not be my sentiments alone, but the senti- 
ments of ALL. Men will come up to Kansas as 
they go up to Jerusalem. This shall be a sacred 
city. 

For my brethren and companions' sake, then, 
I say — Peace be within your walls, and plente- 
ousness in all your cabins, soon to become pal- 
aces. And now, people of Kansas, once more 
Hail ! and at the same time, Farewell. 

[Three most enthusiastic cheers were then 
given by all the assembled multitude for Gov. 
Seward.] 



% 



SPEECH 



OF 



WILLIAM H. SEWARD, 



AT SENECA FALLS, OCT. 31, 1860. 



Ff LLOW Citizens— A crisi.i in iarMvidaal H*e 
is wheQ -i maa passes safel/ t'lroaoli soni=^ pr^ril- 
oas ?'C^-J1eot, or savmou its soma appreh^aded 
mortal dlee-xfe; O" c-laa when he fills before the 
danger, or snccunbs to the disea^o aud die.s. A 
po'i'.icil crisis, sqc'q as we so ofjen hear of, i- 
the period ia wbisb. a nation — for a nation is bat 
a person, a huaaan person consisting of maar 
persons — -urraoaats some national disease or 
avoils soma nalioaal peril, and t^.kas ne^v assur- 
anca and lona life, or failicg to surmouDt it, sud- 
denly or slowly languishes ^nd die?. And poli 
tician=«, availiog themselves througi the ioflieacp 
of interest or passion, tell as very often that thv 
town in which we li^e, or the state in which we 
belong, or the conntry of which we are meacb-rs, 
is in a cri.sis, mit jaiging. because a crisis occu-s 
but f-eldom evan la the coarse of individual life, 
and at very distant periods io the life of a nation 
Bat on all hands there U an aoreement now that 
th s Republic of ours is in a crisis, and I, f >r one, 
confess as I believe it to b^ truf^, if this Repub- 
lic passes safely thruugh tbi^ crisis, it takes as- 
surace of long endararc — practically of im- 
mo-til!;y ; aud if it fiils to pa-^s safely tbrougb 
this <risis, it will laQgQi.!<h and die. To know 
boiv to p\3^ saff-ly through a crisis, it is necea.sa- 
rj to uaderstand iis nature, and to understand 
the nature of the present national crisis it *vill 
be necf^sgsry fo? us to go back to the beginning. 

I s.aid we must go back to the heainring, and 
the moment that we g i back to the begijniag of 
our national existence-! we perc^"?ive the f ict, clear, 
unm-stftk-ib'e and uicontested. that this na'ion 
was to be, not a monarchy, not aa nristocracy, 
bat a R,-pnblican n^ition. That can be a Repub- 
lican nation only which is a free nation ; and i; 
fr'>Ad'-m or liberty is a vital priaciple of even 
R^pubHcaa Qovernmpnt, or every Republican 
Soa/e, that principle ii tbnt the people must be 
fiee and must be f qaal. When we say that the 
people of a country are free and equal, we say 



precisely that that nation enjoys civil and religi- 
ous liberty, and that all, practically all, of its 
citizens e' j iy the rights and safety of their per- 
^oag, of freedom ia the pursuit of h.^ppiaess, 
•vhich iovolves freedom of speech, freedom of 
Lhou^bt, freedom of soffrag^i, and above all free- 
dom of religions consciaace. 

This you will all re jojniza, at once, as the na- 
ture of the Republic which oar f thers ioteaded 
to estiblish, and which .?e all conf^'ss, and the 
vorid confesses, t.hat they did establish. It did 
mean that every human being within the juris- 
diction of the goveroment when it was fi-st e.sta- 
bii.shed, was, or mast immediately be entirely 
free. That was impossible becau-^e slaves and 
slavery existed in the land at ihat time, and 
(here was no process by which every human 
neiog ia the Uaited St;=it=*8, on the firgt o-gacfzv 
Girtn of the government, could be emancipated, if 
in bondage, and raised up to freedom ; bat it did 
mean this, — that the great mass of the people 
were, and should remain, forever free—that 
^livery should be subordinate, in'erior in it's po- 
sition to freedom, and that fceedom fthould be 
^he seDeral and normal condiiian of the eouati'-y 
— that ihere, afcer all ihe chanees, shall be, not 
from freedom towards slavery, l>ut from existing 
and tolerated .'slavery, upward toward freedom. 
This was all that coold have been dooe in fche 
country, at that time, and this country w s in a 
better cond tion to establish a free gov/ernment, 
than any other people that had then existed on 
ihe face of the globe. 

I call your attention, then, to this fact, that 
there were thir.eea of those State? — that this 
was not to be a consolidated nation, consi^stiog 
of oniy one peop'o, and one jmisdiction al>ne, 
like Fri^nce, or like Russia, bu5 thnt it nid con- 
ist of ttdrteen equAi States, and that in these 
States were to remain therefjfter, and until the 
end of time; and each of them should be, in a 
large degree, sovereign States — and all of them^ 



58 



cf course, should be equal. That this was to be 
in tbe begincirig a Rrpublic of thirteen Stales, 
and that, as t'ma snoiild advance, the nnmber 
gfcoald increase to twenty, up to thirty — at which 
standard we have already arrived— and in dis- 
tact years forty, fifty, or sixty States — a thicg 
Eot impo sibie, scarcely improbable, for msr-y 
to i5ee vr ho are not older than the lad who sits 
upon the stsge before me. 

Now none of these States, practically noBe, 
with the exc-ption of Misjachus'tts, fcn:rce]y 
worth noticing, — no one of these States had an 
entire popyiation of freemen. There were 
Slaves in every Stite, and Slavery was ccm- 
mirglrd with freemen in each one. and through 
the WQo3e country. Bnt. neverlheleg?, freedcrij 
W88 rec seized, and not Slavery, in founding the 
Federsl Government, as the element which pre- 
vsi'ed in every one of these tbirteen States ; and 
what was to be done was, to take care that free- 
drm, and not Slavery, should predcmioste in all 
tbe other States, which, under any circcm- 
gtance?, and at any period, however remole, 
mitiht be adopted into the Uoion. 

There was, as you see, Slavery exif-ting then 
in f very State in the newly formed Urion — and 
there was freedom existing in it, and these two 
were in cocflictc Let the silly person who de- 
nies that there is a conflict between freedom 
and slavery wherever they exist in the country, 
and that that crsnflict is irrepressible, answer 
me. [rr^mendous cheering.] Let him an&wer 
me, -i«'helher taking the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, which was tbe first utterance of the 
American Nation, he dees not read there in tbe 
very first sentence of that utterance the €x- 
isSerjce of a conflict between Freedom and 
Slavery 1 

He certainly will read there the declaration 
that " all men are created equal and have ina- 
liecable rigbta to life and liberty and tbe pur.-uit 
c? bappioess." Did they assert a mere truism 
wh'ch all the world accepted and upon which aU 
the world have based all their institutions, or did 
they assort a truth that other people beside the 
American nation, denied and rejected. They as- 
serted a truth which only this nalion, and none 
before this had ever asserted, and which wes 
disputed in this country at the time, and was in 
dispute, and is in dispute still, over the whole 
face of the globe. 

Let me ask the silly person who denies that 
there is an irrep^cEsible conflict between Free- 
dom and Slave'-y, whether every page of the 
history of the United States does not bear testi- 
raony to the cor Act between Freedom and 
Slavery for the period of eighty years that this 
Union has endured? What else have we had 
from the beginning, but attempts to compro- 
mise — vOicpromiEes and breaches of compro- 
mises of the dispute fcetween Freedom and 
Slavery — and if it was so in the beginning and 
has been so through the middle, how is it now 1 
Upon what issue is the American people divided 
in this poUticsl crisis, except a corflict between 
Freedo2i and Slavery! So, fellow-ciiiz^ns, un- 
less thvi coi flict shall end in the manner appoint- 
ed ny Him who creaied and called into existence 
all nations, as he did all men, a'ld that is in favor 
of the right, so it will be an irrepressible con- 
fl\co until this nation shall cease to exist, and 
Bxia-l give place to some other in which the same 
conflict shall be renewed. 



There was then a conflict between Freedom 
and Slavery in tbe beginning, and our fathers 
had to choose between Freedom and Slave- y as 
the elemental and vital principle of the RppubUc, 
Our fathers, diff^rirg from their descendants, 
widely d5fi^ring from you, strange that it should 
be so, were unanimous in accepting and adopting 
Freedom end rfj=ctina Slavery f s tbe elemental 
and vital price' pie of the Republic. And not one 
statesman of them all proposed at any time that 
all the American States, all of which practically 
were then slaveholding States, should conticue 
and remain fcrever slavehclding States, and that 
every, new State which should come into the 
Union through the course of ages, should also be 
a Slave State. If there was one fuch statesman 
in any one of those thirteen Slave Stanes, pray 
n9.me him to me, becnuse his name nnd action 
have escaped my reading of hietory. Not one 
statesman of tbe Republic proposed an equ'Oib- 
rium or a balance, in which Freedom should be 
one principle and Slavery anotber, in tbe Ucited 
States. That is to say, thst one half of the States 
thou'd be Free States and that the other half of 
the States should be Slave States, and that each 
should remain free or slave through all tfm«=» as 
they were at the beginning, and that the future 
States one hslf to be admitted to bo free and the 
other half to be slave, and tbey should re main so 
forever. If I am mistaken in this, if there was 
ary statesman of that day who proposed an equal 
balance between Freedom and Slavery, I pray 
you to name him to me, because his name has 
escaped my reading cf history. Not one states- 
man in any part of this Republic proposed to 
leave the matter to accident or cho'ce, to let 
Freedom and Slavery balance each other, or the 
one to prevail o'er the other, as it might, care^ 
less whether Freedom was voted up or voted 
down, whether Slavery was voted up or voted 
down. Many of you are committed to a theory 
something like this last, nnd to a candidate who 
avows it for a sovereign remedy to a great na- 
tional disease. They mu-t have consulted the 
science and tbe history of the ecience of politics 
in the country ! If there is one of these prliti- 
cal philosophers proposing the theory of indiffer- 
ence or practicing it, I pray you to name him to 
cae, because I have been unable to find it in- 
Bcn'bed upon the history of the fathers of the 
Republic. 

Now, fellow citizens there was a way in which 
this Union could have reen established upon 
either of these three principles. There was a 
way in which this could have been made a Re- 
public, cot of Freedom, but of Slavery And if 
there bad been statesmen who desiied such a 
Government, the process would have fuggeattd 
itself to them, it is very simple, and they would 
have propounded it to the Convention which 
formrd and to the people who accepted onrStEte 
and Federal Co: stitution ; and it was this: — 
Prohibit emancipation in all the thirteen Spates; 
prohibit emigrfition of foreigners fr< m all coun- 
tries into the United States, or any of them, be- 
cause foreigjjers were free men ; deny naturali- 
zition to the foreigner who is found here and 
leave him practically di-ffRnchised, and tbf^re- 
fore in the class of elaves ; [en enthusiastic Irish- 
man in the crowd proposed three groans for 
Fillmor*';] per.e'uite the African * lave Trad"*, 
30 that for all t'me to como the fature inbs;,bi- 
tants of the United States, upon whom they 



59 



mnst depend for labor and for tbe great business 
of 80ciet.y, should bf? AfrlcRn slaves ; declare 
Slavery to be not only existiDg and the law of 
the lard io each S ate, bat declare that it sball 
be perpetual. Declare tbis and tske one step 
more. Lej; the Federal Government, the Con- 
gress of the United States, sbu^i \ p the common 
domain Dp->n wbich the fntBre Sta;e5 wer^ to be 
created, that donaain siretchiDg between the R!- 
ver Ohio and tbe gr. at Lakes to the Mississippi; 
declare that that domain shall be open hereafter, 
not to Piesmea at all, bat only to Slaveholders 
and Slavery. 

No ^ you see how ea^^y it would have been at 
that d'ty, by adopting this fii'^ple programme, to 
have made not the Free E>pnHIic which onr 
fathers b^qaeathed to us, but a Slave Rf-publio, 
from ihe Arlantic Ocean to the Misdss*ppi river, 
and from the St Lawrence to the St. Marj's, 
which were the original boundaries of the Re- 
public. 

There was a way also for the statesmen of that 
day, if that had been what they desired and 
wfcxa*-; they meant, to make a Republic in which 
Freedom and* Slavery should be held in fqulli- 
brium and remain so forever. How was this to 
ba done 1 Divide the thirteen States so that in 
jast one half of the t^^rritory on which Freedom 
should exisit and Slavery be unknown, and in the 
other h'uf Slavery should pxist and Freedom be 
unknown. Admit, of all the future States, ]>in 
one half Free Pud tbe other half Slave; open 
your porta to tbe emlgraT^t from Ireland, Scot- 
land, E iglanl, Frrnae Germany, Holland and 
Swi zeriand j admis just one-half of white labor 
of the country free, keep open tbe African Slave 
trade and admit and receive the other half of 
the labor of Af lean Slaves — here you would 
h'.ve had that perfect fquilibrium between Free 
doii and Slavery whica ihose who oppose the 
R'.pnMican party say is exactly the condition in 
which thf5 country can live and fliurish, and to 
which they propose to bring it by the policy 
upon which they insist. 

There w )S a way also for a third system to be 
established— the don't kn^w and don't care sys 
tern — bat Is, thai, it shall be a Republic of Free- 
dom or Sia%ery, jast as time and chance and ac- 
cidant sh ill detr-rmiae. How was that to b? 
donel Way, if there had been any statesman 
oi t'le order of Mi'. Djuglas at th t time, he 
woukl have taken great care that the Congress 
of the Uaited S'ates should have no power o 
abolish r.he African Slave Trade, but it shouM 
have power to admit at the same time fo^eign 
emig'-a.nts and natutrdiz^ them, aLd that Con- 
gress should be pledged by the Constitution to 
a'lm't a SD-it«, slave or free, just as it should 
come when it off '-red itself, without resistance, 
and he would ha^e taken good care to have the 
Supreme Court bomd up so it should not inter- 
fere wi'.h the ques-ion, and when that was c-or-e 
and whr-ntbat course had been a'lopted, then the 
slnvehoMe's would have been invited to cnrry as 
many slave? into t^e reniio.ies — sew terri- 
tories^ — as they cculJ. and the foreign laborers, 
to go in fts freely as they could , and as soon as 
they g t into the TerrU >ry bf gin to vote it up or 
vote it down, or v.te bolh wa3 s. as tbey chose ; 
an-? wh-^'u Ibey w^re to vote it up or down then 
invi e the sls,vehi.lders of o:her States to in er- 
fer^-^ on the side of Slavery, and then, failing to 
bo able to settle it alrthe ballot box, just resort 



to cannon and rifle, and what they cou'd not 
vote up or vote down, they would fight up «p 
fi^ht down. 

It is not needful, fellow ciizens, for me t^ say 
thftt sueh a republic as would have '5een admit- 
ted upon either of these three principles cculdl 
not have existed seventy years. It is not ijecfs- 
sary to prove that it could not, and therefore I 
pass it by, although it is my own opv/.ion that a 
Republican Gaverrment that can stand ^-t all, 
must stand upon the prirc'ple of Liberty para- 
mount to Slavery. The people of tbe country, 
then, having these three systems bef re them, 
adopted one entirely different from them rdl, and 
that was the principle of makiBg free*:iom para- 
mount in the Federal Governnieot, evfr:? where, 
po far as they could, to tbe principle of Slavery, 
We have grown to our present growth upon this 
principle, and it has become the fixed aod eettled 
habit of our national life, — we live hereafter if 
we continue in the habit of preserving freedom 
of labor paramount to Slavery, and we perish 
whenever we change that habit ; — for it is with 
nations as it is with individuals — the nHlion that 
*'orsakes and abandons the habit of health which 
is essential in its very constitution, declires and 
oerishes as the consequence at the departure. 
How was this principle of Freedom paramount 
to Slavery established 1 The fathers enccurFg^d 
every one of the thirteen original Slave States 
vo emancipate their slaves just so soon as they 
could consistently with the interest and the com- 
fort of society th^n existing. It proposed to no- 
body to abolish Slavery all at once, to snbstitute 
Freedom all at once ; it is neither the course of 
nature nor the course of human wisdom to da 
anything of a sudden ; but time enters aad is an 
essential element in all human traoaactioca 
which are wise. Then they prohibited the Afri- 
can Slave trade, not all at once, becausa that 
might produce a shock if suddenly done. But 
they prohibited it after t'Jc^enty years, and said 
to the slaveholder,:! and those in the slAveholding 
interest, " make good use of your time, twenty 
vears yen may import the black bondman into 
the country and hold him there, but a^ter that 
period, there shall never be another slave im- 
ported into this Union, whether its institutions 
be free or slave institutions " They took one 
further step, and that is, they invited the foreign- 
ers of all lands, the free men of all lands, of ail 
conditions and all climates, into the ecu • i try to 
till up the vacuum or void which was to be made 
by preventing tbe importation of slave?, and de- 
clared that on giving evidence of character and 
loyalty, they sloild all become citizens of the 
United States equal with the native ; aye, evea 
with tbe first born of the Republic. They took 
one further step, and that was, to make all the 
future States that should b^ admitted into the 
Union become not Slave but Free Scatps, by jogt 
buildinu a wall along the bank of tbe Oh'o river, 
where cli the^e new States were to be erected, 
and said, this shall be Free Soil, and it shall 
never he trodden by the foot of tbe Slave, and 
.=very State that shall be erected here shall not 
bo a Slave but a Free State. 

Having jnst accepted tbe^e few simple mea- 
acres, the Fathers sat themselves down cont -nt- 
edly snd said to them*eivea: " It has b?fn well 
and wis<^iy done. True, we have not all Free 
St ites and universal freedom, and for the pre- 
sent we have more Slave States than Free j bui 



60 



wp bs^ve 80 arrangpd the forces of Freedom and 
81 "Very in tbe balarce that in sixty ypars there 
i^iH be more Free Stntes than Slave States ; in 
eiohtv years there will be twice as many Free 
Bsatea as Slave States, and in one huEd red 
yesrs there will scarcely be a Slave State ; and 
8t sorae period, within a hundred or five bun 
dred or a f^ousand vears, every man md^r the 
gnverrmer t ot tbe United States wi]l be a free- 
man and Slaverv anywhere will exist only as 
B relic of barbarism and inhumanity." Does 
any TOan deny now that this wss well and wisely 
done 1 If he does, then he rcuat wish that it 
had never been done — he must wish that this 
wii^e Rxxf^ jidfcious arrangement bad reverbeen 
sn^de. Lf>t us see, then, what would have been 
the consequence. Take a single State. If this 
aTirgement which I bave related to jou, had 
nM bf-en made, this State of New York, which, 
in thp. beginning, when the system vras adopted, 
of which every seventeenth was a slave, would 
fcj.v'" b^en a Slave State now. Does any man 
lit^inof in this Stste or out of it, in any Shve 
State, in J?ny foreign countiy. is there a man who 
po hvite'i the State of New York, and so much 
hate's the human race, that he would be willing 
to have ihU not f?R it is now, a Free State, bur, 
a S'av.» State"? There is not one wheel on this 
livs^r that would be in motion if this were a 
Slave S' ate ; there ia not one mine of salt or iron. 
— snd we are not wealtVy in mineral resoiirces 
.»_tb3t wouli not have c'csed up. Tbe cHv of 
New Yok. a metropolis wr rthy cf a ereat St.ate, 
6 Trr'^trr^p^lis worthy of a great nation, a metro- 
polis worthy of a great conlirent, r^ipidl? ad 
vaiicins to be the fi-^t aod greate^^t city of mod 
e^n rimes, and first, therefore and greatent, of 
ell tb'^ ciLies that ever existed in the great tif'e 
of t^rne — ^hat would it hnve been now if this 
Jii^d h^r-n left to be a 81 ive S'f;t8 inste;?d of a 
F'-ee^tatel Strnnge inconsist^rcy! You are 
all corjt^nted. Everybody is conterit'^d wish So 
ci'='tv as they find it in the Stnte of New York. 
W" couM not be changed backward fcr any- 
thi-\2, We mu^t be free. But if there any who 
tblr k tbiq coridilion is confined to the State 
o^ New Yoik, go, then, thrnngb P'-nnsylvsinia, 
tifyw Jersey Oonneeticut Rhode Inland, Massa- 
ehusett'^ Vermont, N^w Ramoshire, Michigan. 
Ohio, llfinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, ard 
e^en Kmsa?., after the controversy is endfrd, 
sn'^i I sk where is the human heinsf on the face 
cf thi8 earth, that is so hatefnl of human hap- 
piri'^'-s, so hateful of the good and welfare of his 
c untry and of his race, that he would be wil- 
ling to have Free»-^om excluded from that State, 
End Slavery introduced in its plac^. 

Sippose for a moment, that in this State, in- 
pt^vd ff adoptirg the policy of the Fathers, 
m^k^nq tVis free, and seeking to m>!ke all the 
fytp.pT >^r.atps free within the range cf its CfouFti- 
tntt'inal powerr^,— suppose it h«id been a Siave 
St, (*e wbf?t kind of fr^e-^om would the freemen 
in it erj-^y 1 What would thf y be enjoying t^- 
dn • 1 Not fffeiom of speaking JT=t what th y 
thin!? or writing ]ist what they ti.i' k, or thin^:- 
inff JT-t a-^ tb^y please, of worshippin,^: G -d in 
e'tf* y form, with everv ritnal that snits thei^ 
cwn cor;,';ciepce ; bnt they woBld have Hb-rty to 
writer to poeak to think, to vote, to pr.ay j ist 
rx'C ly what the slaveholders desire them tn 
wn^,'"', 8p«Pk, print, vote, fsnd pray. [0':>e«"rs.] 
Is any body then discontented or dissatisfied 



with the existing cocdition of things in the conn 
try 1 Not a man. Everybody is satisfied that 
it WES lightly and wisely ordered in the begin- 
liing. I( th««re be anybody who is dijcnntent- 
ed, I pray him to speak. Is this country all too 
free for you 1 Is there eny danger of its ever 
going to be so much more free as to be too free 
for you'? Is the Republic already too great for 
y:u, and jou would have it legs, or contract it 
in its dimecsions 1 [Cries of no ! no !J Is the 
Republic too rich, too prosperous, our people 
too happy for you 7 Its ccmmerce, the second 
of any nation in the whole world, is it too broad, 
is it too enriching, is it too refining, th?>,t yen 
would have it reduced "? Not st all. [Vrdce — 
•'Wf'll never have it r,fdac«^d," Lsughter,] 
Shall the itflnence of this nation be broken up, 
and aristocratic and drspotie systerns expended 
over the whole world? Do you dislike tbis, 
would you have this a miserable slave Republic 
which would be mentiored in the councils of 
KiUuS and Emperors and the conclaves of aris- 
tocrats not with refppct, and honor, and fesr, as 
it is now, but with scorn, contempt and reproachl 
No ! No ! There is nobody wants the country 
lefs proepf reus, less great, less free, less power- 
ful than it is now. 

But, fellow citizers, gcicg en just exactly in 
the track which waa laid out for it I y the Fathers 
it is going to be so much greater than it U now, 
i50 much brosder, so much wiser and happier, 
aye., and even so much mvff free that those who 
come fifty years after us, will wonder at our con- 
tentment with bf iog satisfied with such a coun- 
try as we then had. Now, does anybody want 
to arrrst it 1 The wny that all this ts to hap|:ea 
is by TOulfc^plyirig the Free States in the west, 
rn(3 taking cpre, as fast a« possible, to see that 
Slavery is reduced and di i inisbed in tbe old 
States, not by any force that anybody is to ap- 
ply, for there never was force contPm|.l^.ted nor 
used, but simply by teach'ng — by example that 
compensated l.'ibor is more productive of wealth 
and happiness in a society, than elave labor, that 
morality is better than crime, end humanity is 
better than inhumanity, and that virlu'? is the 
surei^tand safest guide to national prosperity ard 
greatne>s. But if anybody does want anywhere 
to arrest the growing prosperity and greatness of 
the R- public, there is one simple way to do it, 
I can show him exactly how to do it. Eccnor- 
pge aU the Slave Scates* to conlioue and to per- 
petrate slavery for-^ver, re open the African Slave 
trade, and oren the public domain to Slave 
States instead of free, and the vthol^ thing is 
done, secured to be dor e at le-^st, io the twink- 
lirg o"' an eye. I lam sure that yon do not want 
such r, sad pejv-rsoness to come over the p?^ople 
of this coiiTjtry a-* to produce fuch a &h"ck and 
such a change. Rather w{fb m^^ yen wruid con- 
tirne c^^nttnted. and with the Fathers reducing 
and c rcnmscribing Slavery ja^t as they did, and 
as vioiiantly as tb^y did, and then wsit to eee 
Oanada and all British /l-aerica to the sbore.s of 
Had.soB B:^y, and Ri3"?^i!in As?erica to Behrfrga 
Bfera't', and Spari.sib. Aai.'^Tica t^') tbe Istbinu.s cf 
P.-msma, and perhijpg ?o Cs^pe Horn, fill coming 
h to this R.epnblio a-s thoy w>uM come, volunta- 
rily, as thpy could r;ot be J^^p^- f'om comirg — it 
Tould r^^qnire the swovd to force it — if you 
wcnld ofih' admit them as fcjaalst?!tea and carry 
to fiese the bl^f^s^ngs of your free States, bat 
not the curse of Slave States. 



61 



Well, fellow-citiz9ES, it is sad to confess tbat 
jns!; whit I have been stating to yon as the great 
problem of onr gcvernment, is the very qnestiom 
in this canvass. The question in this canvafs h, 
whether we gh&Il keep thig nation a Rfpnblie of 
Freedom, cv rey-tire sll ita policy and heECcforlb 
mgke it a Republic of Shvety. It were better if 
it were to be a Slave R?pnMic, better that it were 
made so ia the beginninSi than that it sl^oiild have 
been deferred to us to have committed bncb 8 
crirre agairst menkin.'^, and coangs now fi-om 
Fxredona to 81f very. When the netiond pnlfe 
is heahhiest, whrn tbe whole form cf the nation 
is rounded out and fuli^ aijd when its habit of 
exister C3 is Fr^edem, to change Ihftt by ii j 'cit- 
ing Slavery into into itsvelDS. would be to smite 
it immediately nim a poison under which ii 
languish for a time, and dissolve ard dis. It 
cru^d have been made a slave Repnblic in the 
hegjining peacefully. It could be made a shvp 
Reptiblfc now only by RevolntiOE, resuilicg in 
civil war and anfireby. • 

Bat how does Cam qaestion arise 1 It ar!a?s \r- 
this. way. There is nobody d!scontect<r^d amorg 
us ; but south of Mason and Dixon's line t-ierc^ 
is discontentment, and uobappinegs. ard defpor- 
dency, and a fueling amot5oting almost to despair, 
South of the Delaware river, I should have said, 
are s-'x Stales whichj like the other seven, at the 
bpoinning were Slave States, which dpclined to 
tske the ad'cice and connsel of the Fatber.^, as 
the f-even did, end kept and conliDued Slavery. 
and they retain it yet. Tijey are discontented, 
they are unbeppv. Have they suffered from tbi- 
being made a Free Republic'? If eo, will any 
one here who sj mpath'zea with tbem, and thej 
have m^,ny cf tbat c!asr4, will any one tell me 
what wrorg, what injurious measure any one or 
all the Slave States in tbis Republic have ever 
suffered from the policy which has made this 
and kept this a Free Republic'? 

Have tbey not enjoyed Freedom 1 Have thf j 
not er j -syed the frendom of having Slaveiy, &^6 
has ar y one deprived them of the right, of tbp 
power"? Has anyone er j rined upon tberc, or 
enforced upon there, an unwiliirg duty 1 Not 
cnf>. Have they been tsxad oppressively "? The^ 
have submitted to equal trtxation, ond no othpr 
can b^ enforced. Ha'?a they not er j^yed fqui 1 
representstion 1 Aye, a representation equal to 
those of the Free StatPSj with the addition of 
two-thirds of all tb<=i slaves. They complaiQ of 
no wrong, of no r-uffcring that they have endur- 
ed, and thf y could not complain, fov tbey iheTt- 
selvea have admioistercd tbe government ifsf^li 
foe the whole period of fifty years. Thf y mak? 
no complaint against the government :^.nd 't^ 
action, as tbey could not, becart5;e tbey were ex- 
ercising the government, the Free States b^virc 
rpsigned it to their bands In conter-trnpnt. W h a 
then is the character and gfourd r.f their dis- 
confentl N thing but thl'; : that Shvery, con- 
fioed.to the nataral ir create ot slave labor, snr 
being by i*-,g nature inert and wvthoat vig =r anr 
force, that Slavery does not produce prosp^nriti 
for them fqial to the prospentv wbici free Ip 
horard Ft redom produce for the States which 
Rboiished Siaveiy. Tbis is tbe wbole of all tbp 
complaint th^y h&ve— thatwe of tbe Frre State 
prosper more than they of the Slave State* ; 
tbpy under the system of their choice, howfVf^^ 
and we under the system of our cboine. T>je> 
have still another complaiiat, and that is this : 



That Free States multiply so that where we h^d 
in tbe hegirnrng only one Free Sta-e av^^ 'hpy 
had the other twelve, tbey have now only fifteen 
Slave S',ates and we have eighteen Frep S-ntes, 
5^isbout counting tbe last and yoongeft one, 
which they stil? continue to deny to us. 

This discontentm nt it is that works upon 
them to desire to produce a change. "Wbr4 ii 
that change now which tbey desire and vhudi 
they are te- king to produce, and can be pro- 
duced or ly by c ur cons^ent, and we can do no- 
thing without t.-king their voice 1 It is to mRka 
no more Free Stf^tf^s or to h^ake l^es, or tf» rr- 
-luce the number of Frf f» StatPfi in the Repnbl'c 
by admitting bere.«fier Sh ve StRtes, and enable 
them to provide th<^ roatfri«l for the^e '"1 ve 
8:ateB by consentirg to rp-oppn tbe A'>ic;n 
Slave tr?de, sntl thereby Tfj-ct tbe free nr^<l voi- 
untary enriicrart from Earopp, ex<^luaing vciih 
bim f ur own children from the common soil of 
the Republic. 

And now I come to the question howithp- 
pens that we a,ve in tb*" cTi?is vhich I d?s( ribe 
and confess. It i^ that for the sake of p-st-e 
and harmony we hsve gone so f^r with tl era, 
corcedf d to their disc<;r,tprt so If^rg that tbey 
have p'-ccfecpd, in dirrct O|position to 'be 
action of aU tbe gonial cans'^s in tbe cruntry. 
They ha^e procured fr- m the Conare^s of iha 
United States laws, from tbe Prpsidf n' o? the 
United S a'^ps jndompnt^. which all lead d-irfr-ily 
fiO enable thew, if we do rot prevent tbe furibpr 
pa?argi^ of ?U' b laws, if we do not prever t tbo, 
"urther issuing of f^rch edicts, if we do ' at pre- 
heat tbe iu' tber r^ gistprina of such dpcrppp, to 
T-e-opeu tbe African Slnve tradf,' find all the 
Territorips wbicb f^ball rorre in bpTe'.;te" as 
S^ptes will bp S'*rVe Tprrivory and not Fr^p Ter- 
ritory, or at ]pa*t s^ l«rf p k nnmbpr of ihf m as 
to subvert 'be balsnce of Frppdom wbir}^ baa 
been establiHbpd, and to ii troducpi Slv'^prv ps 
an elempnt in tbe CorstHn ion of the Reprbl^c, 

Now, Miow-ci^'z r", I spPKk not unror-'^ci' ns 
of the place ^V ere I stand. lam surroni df d 
by cit z TS of the ernntv of Secpca. Tbs>t one 
<.^>nnty, which bss bppn known to nne int'm t'^ly 
for a long p*^Tiod that ore cour tv lyirg hptve^-n 
two benuu'u' 'ak^?", trsnspprer t as c^stf.l, ^iih 
a soil a« sirb Ot^ ev?r tbp> human band !?r?} j^cted 
to supply thpi wRnts '^f m^n a counts in the ^p^y 
■r^entr? of Western N^w York which stood ppr- 
. intently, — I «il n">t. pay obstioatfly — s-ood 
fixed i="! vrsisting ard in diefspvitinsr from tbp peo- 
plp of a51 the p!»n t,ir!< o^ all the ri^cfion arruf d it, 
nd maif-t^sjr.ing c -ntinunUy. tolf ration vr^* for 
Frpod^m but forSl;v rv concession not to F pe- 
iom. bat cnnres^'oo to S'Rv<^rv, and for np' r'y 
f'orty ypf r.s thj>t T bsvp known it aba'.'^rc^ of 
ine or two hundrrd votes tn^ned the sc b-, if 
x'er it di<^ itsrn, in favor rf Fr«='dnm. (G^d 'o 
■jrai'fd !) avd tbp ^'alancp turnfd it ni''p-lp ^hn 
'^f tbp tioip, I tbirk in f- vor of human oot dj!g% 
[ too?!' wherp I stand I know where y»~u s'find, 
5 k':'0^ that tbi*i ppr-istency in maiotRiuH e f^nd 
f^pfending SUivpry bp'p, whi^ not yon but v nv 
-pi-h-ors of O^ivu a Rnd Wavre, Ontfri^* ar>d 
rnvrtphi'-s, and a'l fbe < tbp'- ppopjp of thi"* S^f^te, 
^'av;i Rr^-fs^pd the f«>f-s/p^ 'f the in^sdpr of 
Slnvey in Kfinsag, Rrd -u npd bim back. 

I k'tow ;ccu bavp n t b^d t\)\^ dc'-li/U — Oo<i 
knows tberp i'^ no snch pprvprso^p'^ flm«^nu m'^n 
tbHt tbpv c«n bp irlSP^^i! If t'^ tbp d^ffpTfr cp >:e- 
tween ligbt and wrcrg justice and iijastice, 



62 



liberty and slavery, humanity and crnelty. You 
have done jt simply because you would not lis- 
ten. You had your guides, grown up men as 
you are ; from childhood up, you had your par- 
lies — your Whig party, and your American party, 
and jour Democratic party. And they had their 
leaders, and you must take care of the welfare 
of your leaders. Must you *? [Laughter] You 
iGUst see that they were sent t© the legislature, 
and sent to CongresSj sent to the public offices. 
and you had no time to listen to those who told 
you that the man that you call your leader is but 
fehe ephemeris of the day, that he perishes to- 
morrow, but. Freedom or Slavery is the interest 
of humanity for all countries, for all ages. And 
you have gone on supporting, boasting that you 
are Old Line Whig«, tintil you have come to a 
pretty pass. [Laughter] Where is your Old 
Line Whig party now 1 This irrepressible con- 
sist that you condemn and despise has broken 
its back, [iaugoter] and its form divided, sunk 
into a ho;^pitable grave. 

You have supported Know Nothlngism, and 
Americanism too, not becange,'! am sure, that 
you are so intolerant as the principles would in- 
dicate, but because it was a convenient dodge 
ti escape from considering the question of 
Slavery. Hew much longer do you propose to 
support if? Do you expect that the time is 
coming soon when you can get the American 
people to proscribe a man because he was born 
in Ireland or Germany, who worships God witb 
a ritual different from your own 1 My idea -^is 
that you have have tried that long enough, and 
found out that of all the contrivances in this 
world for the government of a people where 
universal suffrage exists, secrecy is the least 
hopeful. Now you have tried Dsmocracy, — 
Haven't you tried that loDg enough 1 One 
would think so unless you are so wedded to it 
that you will adhere to it and perish in clinging 
to the dead body in the grave. Where is your 
Democratic pai ty now 1 You had one a year 
sgo, then six months ago you had two ! [Laugh- 
ter,] and now you have none at alL If you have 
got a Democratic party it has got a creed. — 
What is if? It is a creed adopted by a com- 
mittee of merchants in New York, an eclectic 
creed, tskiirg from the three creeds the whole— 
and nothing. 

If you have got a Democratic p8,?ty you havp 
got a candidate for Pre&ideno. Who is it 7 Give 
me his name. [A voice, Breckenri'lge,] It is 
Breckenridge ! haw do you vote for him 1 By 
voting for Douglas *? [Laughter.] Ycuaremip,- 
taken. It was not Breckenridge, but Douglas. 
But if it is Douglas, how do you vote for him 1 
By voting for John Bell "? Yoo may think there 
ig no end to the self delusions which honest men 
may practice upon themselves. You may labor 
under the briief that you have a candidate, but 
the nearest approach to it is, that you have three- 
And of two of them, every Democrat must affirm 
tihat neither is a Democrat ; while the men who 
vote for the third with you, sffirm that your can- 
didate is no Democrat. But you have three 
candidates. 

Now, according to my poor judgment, arid I 
am a simple man, I have bsea all my life, the 
world has said, in strange and erratic coct£6S. 
The world has not agreed with me at all ; and 
the common rule, and I think the true one, for 
ascertaining when a man is insane, is to enquire 



whether his judgment is opposed or not to the 
common judgment of all mankind ; and if it is, 
you judge him to be insane. By this rule I 
have been held insane for a large portion of my 
life. But such as my judgment is, I gi^e it to 
you —and that is, that the next thing for a party 
having no candidate, is to have three candidates, 
and to vote them all at once ! [Tremendous ap- 
plause.] I reason it out in this way : — That the 
Constitution will not allow you to have more 
than one, and if you do, you are voting for no- 
body—and that is jast what you are doing. 
[Renewed applause,] 

.^Now, I ask you, old line Whigs, and Native 
Americans, or Unionists, or whatever you call 
yourselves, ard Democrats, whether you think 
this thing is going to hold out a great while 1 
If you will . take pains to take the record of 
the votes of the people of the free States— 
for now they are the controlling power on this 
subject — for the last twenty yfars, you will be 
able to moR k off the cycles from one to two, and 
three, four, five, sis, seven years, down to twen- 
ty, when at the begianing of that period an Abo- 
litionist — as a free soil man or Republican was 
then called— was not to be found in a township, 
and you find that everywhere else in the State of 
New York, and in the free States, with the ex- 
ception of a few cities, whose circumstances and 
condiiion make them such that they will come 
slower into these things, there stands out nobody 
In favor of these old teats but your county cf Sen- 
eca. How long do you tbiak you can stand it in 
this way 1 (A voice — "just one week.") I don't 
think so. I will suggest to you two reasons why 
it is not worth while to try. It is a fractional 
world we live in. It is better after you have 
made a complete and satisfactory trial, in finding 
that the whole world will not agree with you, 
that there is a comfort in giving up, and coming 
into an agreement with the whole world. And 
the second is that thoro is great diacoEuforfc in 
being pointed cut by your children, and by your 
countrymen, as being singular, inconsistent, ob- 
stinate and perversa. And that is jast what you 
are coming to. You don't know it, but every 
one of you, I might almost say, I have heard of 
yoar reproaching the " Old Fogies " of this land, 
haven't I "? I have heard you reproach the old 
Federalists of this laod, haven't I *? I have heard 
you curse the memory of the Tories of this land, 
haven't 1 1 Wherein does the old Fogy, the old 
iF'ederaliBt, and the Tory, differ from tho Demo- 
oratB (so called) of Seneca County to-day 1 He 
differs not at all, in this, that ho stood up for 
what his conssieDca told Mm was right, until 
the whole world judged that he ought to have 
surrendered Ms opinion to reason and to convic- 
tion. You think there was something very week 
and absurd in old fogyism. There was notl::i';g 
at all. It was an element of the Whig party. Its 
principle was, to insist upon a virtuons adminis- 
tration of the Government. It was right to be a 
Whig, and utterly absurd to be an old Fogy, 
What was Federalism 1 It was not viciom iu 
itself. It was a principle of opinion, at a period 
when that principle was tho saving principle of 
the country. It was virtuous, and right, and 
honorable among all men to be a Federalist, but 
it was a mighty mists ke, when the controversy 
was all ended, to be an " old Federalist." And 
so to be a Tory was not to be a thing wrong in 
the beginning. For it was allegiance, the prln- 



63 



cfple of allegiance to the governnjent of tlie 
conctry. Acd ten years before the Revolution- 
ary war broke out, aye, five years, aye, on the 
day that it did break ont, nine-tenths of the peo- 
ple of the United States v?ere tories, less than 
than one-tenth of them Whigs of the Rsvolntion. 
It WES loyalty to the goverDment. It was recog- 
nized as the true acd rightful government of the 
country. It was right in the beginning to be a 
tory, but it wss a very bad business in the end 
to stick to it after patriotism had given alleg'*- 
Ence to the United States of America. Tske 
care, then, that you don't believe that a name 
can save you, E either cf these naraes had as 
much sanctifying grace in tbem as this magic 
word Democracy has no-??. Take my word for 
it, in five years hence there will not be a man in 
this crowd that listens to me now, that will not 
regret that he did not change and go with the 
peoole of this country in saving themselves from 
a fatal calamity. Besides, it is a sad thing to 
thick that we may live to be so old, and continue 
so perverse that wo lose the sympathies of our 



neighbors, fellow- citizens and countrymen, Why, 
I desire as the greatest good, that when my time 
for sctive life shall have passed, I m«y set" down 
at home, enjoying the respect, confidence, good- 
will and esteem of all my neighbors, an^ong 
whom I iQcln<!e, of conrae, all the people of Sen- 
eca county. What a gad thing for me to think 
of, if I were a Democrat, persietiDg as you &re. 
I should go into retirement and all the wnrld 
forsBke me, because I have not had wisdom, 
sagacity and kindness pnough of nature, to se- 
cure friends who should surround me in old age. 
(Obeers.) And then to think, once more, of 
what a fearful thing it is that when you die, to 
be buried with strangers, and carried to the grave 
by those you denounced, when alive, as enemi??s 
of yourself and your country. But it is perfectly 
sure that the man who lives henceforth six years 
a Democrat, and if he lives to old age, wnihsve 
the shame, in his closing hours, of knowing that 
the pall-bearers, mourners, priest, and the whole 
procession, will be|eiack Republicans ! (Pro- 
longed cheers.) W 



GOY. SEWARPS SPEECH AT NEW YORK. 



DELIVERED :N^OyEMBER 2, li 



Fellow Citizens :™It wonld surprise, I doubt 
not, citizens of this metropolis who meet daily 
on 'Change, and who are found at night ia the 
political and social circles, if I were to claim 
that I, whose home is in a distant rural district, 
feel an equal interest and equal pride ia the 
prosperity and greatness of New York. And 
yet I know not why I should not. The city, and 
the country around which sustain it, are not 
separated and isolated from each other, but they 
are parts of one whole. The town stands, by 
common consent, for town and country. Cer- 
tainly, an inhabitant of the suburbs may justly 
feel that he shares in all the pride and in all the 
glory of the city, as he certainly is seldom alto- 
gether esempt from its misfortunes or disasters. 
But when a city extends its dimensions so far on 
all sides as to make the State its suburb, aod 
when, extending gtill further, it embraces tbo 
most remote region of country on the continent 
as its suburbs, then he who lives outside as well 
as he who resides within the city gates, feels his 
heart warmed with the impulses of patriotism, 
for the town and country become one. 

[Here a scene of confusion began, and increas- 
ed until the entire audience appeared to be in an 
uproar. Crowds rushed in from the adjoining 
yard, men rose and stood on ihe benches, some 
which brolie down, and there was a constant 
swaying to and fro among those who were stand- 
ing. At length Superintendent Kennedy came 
to the front of the platform, and calling in two 



or three policemeHj said there were some me^ 
here who wanted to be taken out. The police- 
men entered the crowd, and several suspicions 
persons were seen to leave. In the midst of the 
uproar a voice was heard, saying: "We will 
hear Wiiliem H Seward if we stay here till 
morningo" [Cheers] Partial order havicg been 
restored, Superintendent Kennedy said : " I 
want tho first man taken out who proposes 
cheers in a way to interrnpt the speech. (Em- 
phatically) I want him taken onl" [Cheers J 
Mr. Seward then resumed his speech £mid per- 
fect quiet, as follows :] 

Fellow- citiasns : I have sometimes thought 
that a man who lives in the country could see 
about as well what was going on as one who 
lives in the midst of the excitement of the town 
or capital—- and upon the principle that if yon 
stind a little further back you are gpt to see 
fast about as well. [Laughter.] And I certain- 
ly have thought sOj within a week past, when I 
have heard or read presses in tbis metropolis 
talking of rural districts, of distant cone lies, and 
even of states or provinces of New York ; and I 
think so now, when I see presses in New York 
echoing the sound and alarm of sedition and in- 
surrection; and disunion in distant rural district?, 
for to me nothing is more plain than that this is 
a country in which there are no provinceg— least 
of all any provinces which owe allegiance to the 
city of New York; and, on the other hand, thafe 
this is a country in which there are no rural dig- 



64 



tr'cts, nep.r or for, North or Scnth, that caD dis- 
solve tbe boidwticb b>ECs t>erG lo ttecccmfr- 
ciBl Bid focjjil circle of t^f- cciitlry. [Aj pltns^e j 

Id t'np spirit, then, cf fucb a pride in ihe cii) 
in vli ch \^e stgrrt, r.s 8 pHtiioi nay iee\, I bh^i) 
licpe lb?^t I can s.pff;k pufiiibly if I tregt ibf 
pciitifsl qref-ticts of ibe cfei.Tggfs Id their rein- 
ticts to vhe ff-trcpclig ci ibe ccutuy. fAp 
pbuje ] In ibe b^gicrirg of ber biaory. tfce 
city oj I^cs York ^es es ueccdsc^otis of itb thci 
fBtCTR dcstity 8S tbe c( niiiry vrss igroreLt itseJt 
of tbis desUny of the city. At Ibe begicnir g c 
this crtiiry it waa a fir all provircial to^^n ; ii 
bed j- St lost the eeat ( f ibe fedf rei goverr uiert, 
and its irland n&vigati< n was all iiclndfd in h 
eloop navigation from New Yi rk bay lo the Over- 
filawff, a AibRty, tcgeiber wiih ti e n!-.v]ojtiioD o' 
LfEg IsiRtd Sound, Public fpiritrd cisizf cs ci 
New Yoik ca^t sbcnt to jee what tbfy e<:nld do 
to cominne the prc&p^rity wbicb Kt w Yoik bed 
recently eijojed in continence «.f bting tbe 
fecrrai cEpnal. W 

They oorcladed that it was usplofs to try to 
maka a commercial city on New Yoik npy, be 
canc-e ihe cottmerce of tbe c- nrtry was de--iined 
tobee.'jojtd by Boston and Philarelpbia, ard 
the wise men of the day, after capiirg aicru d fcr 
ali other resonrees. flonlly ccnclnced ibat ibi 
island cpcn \shich «-e stand was cxaeily the be&t 
epos in the whole country for tbe e^ti.Ui!?brc.eiit 
of schools which, by bringirg pnpils frcm largf; 
portions of tbe&mTonndirg ccnuiry, would makf 
a toii^rably fair town upon Manhattan i&land 
[Lauthier ] 

I do n? t kr.cw whetbf-r the experfment was- 
attempted, but if it was, I do notdacb. ih-t N^^w 
York was ijoon dirtancefl Id the 5 f c-- of edncaiiou 
by Priticeton and New Haven. I do noi know 
"wheiber the people o/ N^ty Jerspy ard tbe peo 
pie of Ccnnecdcut bad bettpr qnai ficatii ns foi 
inEt-uciirg cbe young; but I muhl cotfes?, ano 
I spe^ k i^ nfv?ribelets. with reverence, th t the 
Scotch., the SoglJab, and the Irish s- hoclmaeteis 
End tbp Dutch ^h.ch Nfw York city tten em- 
plojed, if ihey were to be jadg^d frcm ihohf 
wh- m ihey sent out into the lurai districts in ra\ 
chiidbood were not alb'gether ih^» best qoal'fieo 
pe;s.>L.8 f(r the task cf priblio educatiou. [Ap- 
plause, and 'three cbeeteffr VViUiani H. Se 
vsfrd, lb.- father of fee scbooi^.'] 

Miixbattan I&iaxd, felinw-ciiizecs, fell by ibe 
di^peDsaiioa of a wii-e Providence, wi'.hin i.h*^ 
circuit of a grtat Scate and a grrat- N.*t5oc ; anf , 
although th;it S;ate and that nation ibor^bi, hi; 
tie and caied ie&s for ibe ci^y <'f Nf-w Yoik, jet 
like a greiit Siate and a g-eat Nation, ibey 
thought chiefly, they thouglit lorg, and vbey 
cared vvisely for tbtii- ischools. The State o^Aned 
a broad region, rich in fot■eJ^tP, micirvls, fgdcul 
tural and ni",nuf..ctuiir g reecu c?!h. Ijing s'-nth 
of the St Lswence and west of ihe hlSs at Ca 
ho; s An> 01 e could bee that a gre t a^d ti -nr- 
ishi^^g State mo&t arise here, if this giTar. reaioc 
ccfiild be pfopied with i-ee meri. intelligent m*T^ 
and 11 its setUf TiS could be furnishecl «itb fccili 
ties for accebs to this, tbe only fe=?port in tee 
S:.ate. The Uni e6 Siaces owLed a t-iiii gteaier 
domain^ lyitg just west of rh=< domain • f N'-w 
York, sireicjuing to ihe Missouri river, fcn<^ 
bouoft'^d norih by the lakes, au<1 f>ouih by tbe 
River Ohio. E7er,body Cid s^e ihai ihe nauor 
muss become a gren':, / ai.if>n, if ih^y con d spresc 
ciViLziJon, tbe civilizUion cf inieiligent free- 



men, ever this vast dcmain, end cculd connect 
ibe seRt of that flcuriebirg portion of ih^ conn- 
try wifn an adequate support upon the Atlantic 

COPSt. 

New York city — ManhattRD Island, rf tber— - 
stood JD^t fxsctly in the bounds to which ali 
tbe ccttDieice of Western Npw Yok, end p.ll the 
ocameice cf Wesiern Amejlca EDua-t col verge, 
if on;y tbe right policy was adoj:>ud to concen- 
trate tbat ccnjKerce here. To ncake tbis gieat 
State atd ibis great Nation, it r» qaired Icgisla- 
licn,. not sry fsoc s-e of power or of force, but 
oil* proper ard wise Ipti-bnion to circcs fcnd 
•tvjgoraie the fx-stirg social forces amoi g us. 
Theiefcre robtdy, at th?it day.. prcpoEed to c n- 
qu«r any addiiional ttrdtory, or to fuVinspte 
torf-ign natioLS for tbe purpose of itcresf-ixg tbe 
ereatness of cur own. "What did it rpqnire'? 
You will tee in a moment what it lequ reo from 
v.hf<t was dore. 

The^p w prp in all tbis State of New York then 
only S90 OGO irhabitantF, and of tbete every 
teverttcnih p^r^on wsp an Afiic^.n f-Uve, There 
w* re in the Uni ed Spates only 4 00iiOGO of 
teople, ard of ihe^-e fotne half a million were 
African slaves, Eveiy^-ouy cfu'd sfe tbrt a 
gfe»i So te ccu:d not be built iu New York ui.cn 
ihe baj<is of a wbitp pocu^ation consisurg of 
only 300 000 .'onls. E? erj body cculd f^ee that a 
great na'i^n could not be created in the Uui ed 
vSiHiPH upon f? b?sis of cnly four millions cf sonls. 
And at Lfsat t-me the ehment cf it create, the 
i crpas-ina force was the increase of African 
rjpgroes in t^ad of white citizf^ns as well in the 
State of New Yotk as in the Urited Sta es. 
Ihe refison was an obviocs one. The Af icfin 
slave trrce wss in lull force, ard it was vgor- 
uu>ly exercised for tbe p'ofits of tie white 
cvhii, 8nd auch as men dpn< uoce tbe ees'^r- 
lion of an irrepref^f^ible corflict f great applfUfe] 
oet«een freedom ard slavery in the same com- 
njcnit.^, it was apparent and manifest, then, that 
that, tbis importation of African negroes, 
jimountirg to the <xclu&ion of European free- 
iteu, was a bcuoty, a bonus upon regsoes, ard 
ohere i'?eie expensive burthens, costs, aad 1 sses 
upon white men. 

I do not fenc^ how it is. It is for these phi- 
'o.-< pberf; vvho df^ny tbe irrepressible cof fl'ct to 
t^il bow it was. that, so earl^ as that day, ss it 
nas been to this rfs-y, wh*-rever a State wiil sd- 
fwil or inDp<r^j Af ican negroes, v^luntarj emi- 
gr«nvs from Iroiatd, E g'aLd, snd Germsr-y, wili 
not go. Wnat wrs to be dore to mt k-^ th^s 
great St^Je and this sreat nat'on p^csporors '? 
It W8S lo ciminish tbe force of the Atr can lab ^r 
— to dimnsh it and arrest it — and iLiVigrrate the 
force of tree emigration. Does anybody routt 
tbatl It roqaired also a system of intprnsl Jna- 
provemoBiis, to be con mpnsurhte wi>h the g'eat- 
nets of tbe regions woch weje tfcus to be in- 
habited ; and it leqaired tbst the froe labcriz g 
popu'siion should re educ^sed f.rd trEinort, to 
ds to be nble to rriaictain a Ptepabiican g' v.'^in- 
ment. Tbis rrquoed tbe cc-< per^iion of ibe 
Fcdersl L='gb-}. tura and of the State Leg'sla'ure. 

The federal legislature addrfs^ed th' m.*i*^ive3 
to th^ir work in the Corgro^-s which | re c-flcd 
the ccnHituuoD; i^;-! thp coLveniion v*hith tianed 
i coDt^tUntion, and in the corgrers which tu:- 
c-cced the conhtitotion J h^se three federal 
it>gi->lauve cuhorit'es settled the v^hole mf«tier iu 
a manner simple aLd piactical. They did not 



65 



extirpate or attempt to extirpate African slavery ' 
They did cot eoaancipate or attempt to emaDci 
pite the African slaves. Thev did not even ar- 
re'dt at onca the African slave trade. But it die 
encourage all the Siave Siales to remove slavery 
thenaselves, as soon as they p.-actically coulo 
without, disturbing the peace and order and in- 
terests of society, of whxh the Slates were lefi 
the sole jadges. The next step they took wru 
to prohibit tbe African slave tradf — not immedi- 
ately, but after the expiration of twenty ye^rs 
and to declare that from and a ter that time nc 
African slave should ever be introdaced into the 
Uuited States, 

Th'^y took one step now on the side of free 
labor — they enoouragei free libor by Federal 
laws, by mvkJog the emigrant from Earope 
ho'vever p'>or an-i pennil<=8s ; no m it'^er whether 
he were C iiholic, or ProLfstant, or Jew, or 
Greek, or G'^ntllr- [ ipplaujiej ; n ^ matter whether 
he was an E ijli^bman, or German, or Pole, or 
Hangariao, irk^j invited hitn to cornr*, and ioas- 
muc'a as all emigration wss free, they declared 
that he might sell the labor wh?ch he shoa'd 
perform f -r years aftfr bis airiv/il to pay thf- 
expenses of his transportation to this free lan^< 
from his native soil. They took one other broad 
and liberal step, and that was, they declared by 
lawi of nata-aUzation that a <rf*eman emigrating 
into thiiH ooan ry, from whatever land, should, 
after sufficient probation to establiah bis charac- 
ter and loyalty, be admitted as a cidzen of the 
Republic, and of every State in it, too, Free 
Bta^o or Slave State, on the same footing wiib 
tbe native b. rn They took one more &tep, mor-- 
eflactive than ail the rest, and that was tbat tb--^;^ 
shut ap tbe whole of the nnoccapied, uQsettleo 
national domain upon which all the future State? 
were to be {-ractej — they shut it up against 
Slavery and slaves thenceforth and forever, 
[4pplao8e.J 

Thi-i is wnat the Federal legislative authority 
did — hear, now, what tbe Slates did. Tne priz^- 
of commercial greatn^^ss and alory was eqaally 
sought by all the thirtasn States — -even of them 
secondiDg the wise, and, I had almost said, and I 
will say, the pious policy of the Federal Govern- 
ment — abolish Sisvery f 03i all their btrder^ — 
not all at, once — jot by violence — not by confisca- 
tion — but they took such measures in t^,e5ea:! 
1800, or thereaooat^, that t-ventv-fi^e year? 
aUe ward — wher-as, la the 5 ear 1800, ever) 
ta^-nty-pighth persoa was a Slave — la the yea^ 
1828, not one Slave was fonnd upon the soil o^ 
the State of New York. Six other of tbe State-^ 
foil r=ved in the same policy, bat ^ix more — thf 
more Soaihern State- — ieciined to parsoe that 
poiicy, and s ill determued ?o compete for the 
greit Mali mal comm'^rciHl priz^. 

Tha Sta'je of Nev? ITotk had in its early days, 
enlightened statesmen ra*n who had noc learn- 
ed the demoralizing doctrine of these times, tha^ 
viriu-^ and freedom euf^eble a Smte, and tba- 
Slavery is a neces<^ary element of national great- 
ness. Among ihe great men, and great pitriotf:^ 
of that ea ly period, were Garistopher Uoles, 
Hamilton, Jay, the Clintons, Tomj'klns, find, 
coming later, Rufas Ki i^, and n^vu au worthy o; 
the no:>le association, John W Francis, of th--^ 
city of Nnv York. [ Ipplause ] The thoaght 
of these men, then cail'-v! speculation and Imagi 
natioo, filled the age in which ih*^y livtd, auo 
they prg5cted and there have since been com- 



pleted all the great tliorongbfarps for commerce 
^bioh were requisite from New York bay to the 
S' Liwrence, and to the lakes!, and other States 
have coaiiQued ih6 work until these eame chan- 
lels of ini?r3oar&e and commerce betv^een the 
city of New York and other poriions of ihe con= 
dueat now reach tbe veiy borcera of oar civiiiza- 
uon in the West, 

One thing more was necPESiry, a^d that waa 
?ducatiori— education for a free people. The 
foandatinn of a syatemofedac'uion— equal, fair, 
juat and impartisi among ail the classes of tae 
citizens — ^as laid in the State at sn early day 
tfter mnch atteni.ion, and «'as fiaaliy introduced 
%Vid established permaneptly in Ihe City of Nesv 
Yoik [Ipplause.] Here, feilow-CLUzsns, I have 
old yoa ia these few words, tbe .vhole 
fiundation of all tbe prosperity of the Siata 
of New York, which no:? ccuots a popaU- 
tion of four millioDS, and has a eommeree &ur 
p issing all the other States ; as well as the 
foandation of the prosperity of rae Uaiied States., 
whi<3h now, instead of fear millions, connta 
ihirty millions, and which liava eeia'rjiishfcd in 
vha City of New York, as the one port v-hich 
elone was adequate— a coiimercicl inland, tur- 
p -.sbing that of any other cEpital, and a foreign 
commerce second only to one in the world, 
[Applause. 

Sarely, fellow-citiagns, if instead of being now 
before citizens of this, metropolis of tiiis great 
State and of tbe Uaited State.**, I had loid this 
story to a stranger in a foreign land, he ^onid 
have said, " Yon have told me of that Atlantis, 
f,hat happy republic whioh the ancient phikso- 
phers conceived and the ancient posts snng, ^'Ui 
■vhich tha hard expeisnce of mankind has 
uitherto pr ved to be an iajpossibi!ii.y and a fa- 
brication." And no*?, for the fatme of New York. 
I myself, when I was even older than some 
bearded hearers before nee, sor.jht recreation 
atid rest at the city of New Yo k, by I aaging 
-around tbe open tombs i'l the Putter's fii^ld. ia 
wnat is no.v VVashiogton Sqaare. Aod I think 
i very able and ingenioub wiiier, in a morning 
aews paper, yesterday called my attention to tha 
fact that he attempted to est??blsh, by a dem-ou~ 
•stati^m, that in a period of 150 years the popu- 
lation of the United States would be 300,000,000 
— tbBt it wculd surpass tbe present population 
■f China. I doabt not the fi^artS are accurate. 
What, then, fifoy years henc?, for it is to be a 
gradual progress — what, only a hundred 5 ears 
^ence, is to be the magnitude and population of 
.he city of Ne^y Yorkl Take into vsese c n y 
i-^o agea-ales — a combiriatio.j of the great city 
of New Yoik and of the United Scates In in- 
crea^isg their os^n greatnesK—the greatceaSj 
jfory, and magnificence of New Y^:rk follow- a3 
ts necessary and inevitable consrqaeufe, fho 
commerce is to be soon, not m^reiy a national 
comraercf*, bat the coiaaieiC3 of the contiaent 
(f America. And I need not teli youfcLatthe 
port whioh enjjys the comoisrce of the conti- 
Q??nt of America cammnnds at once the com- 
aerce of tbe glore. 

Yuu have now seen w'mt has produced it, 
Whit remains, i.^ to consider wbao is aeediu! to 
vecure this future for the city, as well as for the 
ciaotry, of waich you, as well as mj>eif, are 
aeceisariiy and natnratlj, and ja>tiy yo, amt;i- 
JoQ'i Wnat can it be that is necdfa; to be done, 
my fellow citizens, but to leave thiigi go on jaai 



66 



]'\ 



exactly as thej have gone on hitherto— to lesve 
slavery to be gradnally End peacefnlly circum- 
scribed, and limited hereafter as it h3,°3 been 
hitherto— to leave the increase of our own white 
population, and the increase by foreiga immi- 
gration, to go on JQst esactly as they are already 
going on— to leave the can lis and the railroads 
in fall operation as tbey are— -to leave yonr sys- 
tem of educition and toleration to rest upon the 
basis on whi zh tbey stand already ! ( A.pplans9 ) 
There, if you please, is what I understand to bo 
Kapublicanism, (Loud applause.) I do not 
know what complexion it w.?ars to your glassos 
Men may call it black or green or red, bat to me 
it is pare, simple, unadulterated Repub-icanism 
(applause) and Americanism. There is the whole 
question in this political canvass. If you elect 
that eminent and able and honest and reliable 
man, Abraham Lincoln, (loud and prolonged ap- 
plause) and if, as I am sare you will, during the 
course of the next four years, constitute the Sea- 
ate of the Uaited States with a majority like Mm, 
"(applause) and if, at the present election, you es- 
tablish the iSouse of Representatives on the same 
basis, you have then done just exactly this : you 
have elected men who will leave slavery in the 
United States just exactly where it is now, (lond 
applause) and you will have done more than 
that : you will have left freedom in the United 
States on every foot and every acre of the public 
domain, which is the basis of fature States, just 
exactly as it is. (Loud applause.) 

There are laws of Congress, there are edicts of 
presidents and governors, there are j!i<?ginentSj 
or pretended judgments, (ironical Isughtsr) 
which have a tendency— if they should stand 
(renewed laughter) and if they should be con- 
tinued and renewed by future presidents and fu- 
ture congresses and future judges of the supreme 
court— to change all these things and to put sla- 
very with the free states again, (voices, " no, no," 
" never, never,") and to send slavery into and 
freedom out of the territories of the national do- 
main. [A voice, "It cannot be. "J AH that we 
propose to do, all that you will do, and, thank 
God, all that it is needful to do, is to take care 
that no more such laws, no more sush edicts, no 
more such judgments, or pretended jurTgments, 
are registered, [Applause,] Why, then, since 
it is so simple, shall you not go on in the same 
way which was begun by your fatheis, and 
which has been prosecuted so long and with so 
much success 1 They tell ns that we are to en- 
counter opposition. Why, bless my soul, [langh- 
t«=ir] did anybody ever expect to reach fortune, 
fame or happiness on this earth, or a crown in 
heaven, without encountering resistance or op- 
position'? What are we made men for but to 
encounter and overcocne opposition arrayed 
against usln the line of our du'y 1 [Applause.] 

But whence comes this opposition, and what is 
iti I have Already alluded to the fact, that fifty 
years ago, when the seven northern states abolish- 
ed slavery, the six southern did not see their in- 
terest in the same way, and they declined to sec- 
ond or adopt the policy of the day and of the 
age, but retained slavery. And having retained 
slavery, the world found out, just about the 
same time, the usefulness of cotton as a fabric 
or material for human clothing, and an invention 
was made by which its manufacture became easy. 
So the slaveholding states, retaining their slave 
labor, proceeded to build up a great interest on 



the growth of cotton ; and when they had grown 
cotton, and made it a great material interest in 
I the country, they then fell down before it and 
I did it homage. I do not say they paid worship 
j to it, but they anointed it king [laughter], and 
they pronounced allegiance to it a political duty. 
Did an J body interfere with this homage ? Did 
anybody complain of it ? Never. They are at 
liberty, like ourselves, to raise a commercial, a 
political, or a social king within the republic. 
But they set up a throne in our midst, and said 
we, too, must bend and bow before it. And 
from that requirement we have modestly and 
firmly — not very firmly, neither, always, [laugh- 
ter] — but with tolerable persistence, declined. 

Now they find that their system does not build 
up states like New York, but, on the other hand, 
the six states that pursued their system have re- 
mained stationary — or relatively so. The great, 
the greatest and finest site for commerce on this 
continent is New Orleans. In early life I made 
a pilgrimage there to see whether it was not true 
that that city was to supersede and supplant 
New York, the capital of my native state, as the 
city of commerce on this continent. I found 
that there was ten times the population in New 
York that there was in New Orleans, and that 
it was increasing in a ratio of such magnitude 
that, when New Orleans should have a quarter 
of a million New York would have a million and 
a half. I will tell you how I found out this fact. 
When I went out at night in the city of New 
York, I saw the cobbler's light twinkling in his 
window even until the gray of the morning. I 
saw everythinij made, as well as sold, everywhere 
in the city of New York. But when I came to 
New Orleans, I there found that everything was 
sold and nothing made. After trying in vain to 
find an article of human workmanship that was 
made in the city of New Orleans, I did see a sign 
opposite the St. Charles hotel with this inscrip- 
tion : " Wagons, carts and wheelbarrows made 
and sold here," I said : " I have found, then, 
one thing that is made in New Orleans, to wit ; 
coarse wagons and carts, and rude wheelbar- 
rows." But upon crossing to inspect tlie matter 
a little more minutely before entering it in my 
notes, I found that I had overlooked some words 
painted in small letters — " at New Haven " 
[laughter] ; so that rightly read, the sign was 
thus : " Wagons, carts, and wheelbarrows ; made 
at New Haven, sold here." [Renewed laughter.] 
B^ellow-citizens, this is not a reproach ; it it 
not spoken reproachfully of New Orleans, It 
would not become me to do so. Bat it is their 
system. They employ slaves; and in New York, 
I was going to say, we employ freemen, but I 
think I -v^ll reverse it, and say that freemen em- 
ploy their masters. [Laughter and applause.] 
This is but an illustration. The principle is the 
same in every department of industry, every de- ^ 
partment of manufacture. Now the slave states 
not only build no great cities, but they build no 
great states compared with these free states. 
There is one great distinction, and that is, the 
free states multiply and replenish the continent 
with free states. But the slave states foil to mul- 
tiply and replenish the continent with slave 
states ; and they say that the reason is not in 
the nature of slavery and freedom relatively, 
but in the injustice of not allowing them first to 
establish slave territory ; and they are coming 
to say next, as they logically must, that we must 



67 



re-open the African slave trade, and so to furnish 
a supply for slave states. Tlie opposition is 
founded upon this state of facts. Is it reasona- 
ble to concede to it ? We cannot do so unless 
we are willing to arrest the prosperity, the 
growth, and the gi'eatness of our city, of our 
state, and of our country. And. that would seem 
to end. the argument. 

But they then resort to terror and menace. 
They tell us that they will withdraw their trade 
from the city of New York, unless her citizens 
will vote as they require them to vote — for their 
supposed interest. Is it best to yield to that ? 
Why, fellow citizens, New York is not a prov- 
ince of Virginia or of Carolina, any more than 
. they are provinces of New York or of Connecti- 
cut. *New York is the Metropolis of the country ; 
New York must be the Metropolis of the cqnti- 
Dent. Her commerce, like her principles, must 
be elevated, equal, just, impartial toward every 
state ; toward freedom, at least, if they must be 
tolerant of slaver5^ But they proceed to tell us 
that, if we do not accede to their demands, they 
will secede and dissolve the Union. Shall we 
then surrender'? That involves the question 
whether they will secede and dissolve the Union 
if we do not. What then is it that we purpose 
to do, which they require us not to do ? Why, 
it is simply to vote for the man that we prefer 
over the three men, or the no man that they 
prefer. {"Great laughter.] Is there any offense in 
thaf? Why, that is just what the Constitution 
says we may do. And, insomuch as there must 
necessarily be a difference of opinion amongst 
lis, the Constitution requires every man, not to 
vote for the man that somebody else wants elect- 
ed, but for the man he himself prefers over 
everybody else. [Applause.] 

Well, they say, nevertheless, they must take 
offense. We ask, is not this right ? Why, yes, 
so far you are all right. Why, then, will you 
dissolve 1 They reply, *' we will dissolve be- 
cause that Mr. Lincoln, and a whig Congress, 
will commit aggressions upon us after they are 
elected." Very well, we say; but is it not pru- 
dent, is it not reasonable, to wait for them to be 
elected first and commit the aggressions [laugh- 
ter and applause], or attempt it, at least? They 
answer, *' no, we cannot afford to wait for the 
overt act, because the overt act may never be 
committed [great laughter and applause], or if it 
shall be committed, we shall be so much de- 
moralized that we cannot resist and vindicate 
our rights." Well, I will not argue the latter 
point. But I do believe better of them than 
they proclaim of themselves. I know their 
manhood, their spirit, their courage, and their 
chivalry, and I know enough of human nature 
to know also that he that waits until the overt act 
is committed before he strikes back, will be able 
lo recover his rights a thousand times sooner 
than he who strikes before any overt act is com- 
mitted. [Applause.]' 

But why shall we expect that the President 
Lincoln, and his cabinet, and the Congress, will 
commit aggressions against the slave states. 
They cannot do it constitutionally; and what 
they cannot constitutionally do cannot be done 
in this country. [Applause.] Besides, who are 
these men who are to commit these unconstitu- 
tional aggressions? They are citizens of the 
United States, chosen by their fellow-citizens, if 
not altogether the best, yet from the best of any 



part of the fra§ states. Are they less likely to he 
honest, and just, and wise, and prudent states- 
men than the men selected from the same con- 
stituencies who have heretofore filled the seats 
in Congress ? Aye ; but they tell us that this 
Republican party is driven on by enthusiasts, 
and madmen, and fanatics, and that they will 
control, instead of being restrained by, their 
>tatesmen. This Republican party, that next 
Tuesday is to elect Abraham Lincoln President 
of these United States [great applause], what 
will it be but a majority of the American people ? 
[Applause.] 

If it is less than that, it cannot elect anybody. 
[Laughter and applause.] If it elects anybody, 
it will be precisely the same American people 
that has tolerated the government in the abuse 
of constitutional powers, out of tenderness to 
the South, and to ail the slave states, for the pe- 
riod of fifty years, [Applause.] It will be as 
forbearing still as it can be and maintain the 
principles of freedom ; and to maintain those 
principles, as I have already shown you. involves 
no action of the government in any unconstitu- 
tional direction whatever. But they tell us' that 
we argue only upon reason. But what we fear 
is, that the South, the slave states, will not listen 
to reason. They are excited ; they are disturbed ; 
they are passionate ; and they will go out of the 
Union, reason or no reason, right or wrong. 

Well, fellow citizens, I think very different of 
the South, as I do of the North. The elevation 
of a chief magistrate of a great republic of thir- 
ty millions of people, brings every party and 
every interest to use the best arguments to sus- 
tain its cause that it has. We give them the ar- 
guments that some have submitted to you so 
often here, and which I attempted to renew to 
night. They give us in return — what? Denun- 
ciation and threats. Well, they are not a very 
logical form of argument ; but they are not to 
be blamed who use them, for they are all the ar- 
gument they have. [Laughter and applause.] 
But Avhat is it our duty to do ? To threaten 
back again ? to fulminate menace for menace, 
and denunciation for denunciation 1 No ; but 
to listen and hear with patience, with kindness, 
with fraternal feeling and sympathy. [Applause] 
For we do expect them to hear our argu« 
ments, and our arguments are much harder to 
hear than theirs are. [Applause and Laughter] 

I do not think these threats before election 
evidences of revolution and disunion after the 
election, for the simple reason that I have al- 
ways found that a man who does intend to strike 
a fatal blow, does not give notice so long before- 
hand. [Applause.] And for ten, nay, twenty 
years, these threats have been renewed, in the 
same language and in the same form, about the 
first day of November, every four years, when it 
happened to be just before the presidential elec- 
tion. A man intoxicated may threaten ; but he 
never knows what he will do when he becomes 
sober, [laughter and applause], as all the world 
knows that no sober man can tell what he may 
do if he should suffer himself to be overtaken 
by intoxication. A man in a passion can never 
tell what he will do when he is cool ; as every- 
body knows from his own experience that he 
very often does when he is cool much wiser 
things than those he meditates doing when he is 
hot. [Applause.] 

These menaces are made by politicians m 



68 



tlie name of tlie people of the slave states. 
As I have said, \vliat else can you expect 
tliem to do? Wliy, it was but the other day 
in the State of Michigan, a citizen asked me 
what I thought of the state of New York. I 
said I thoiiglit it sure for Lincohi, and he told 
me thai Mr. Dotighis had just come from the 
State of New Yoik and they had told him that 
he claimed that he was iioinoj to carry the State 
of New York himself, [Gri'eat iaughier.] Well, 
said I, my good friend, how can I help it if Mr. 
Douglas does ^ay so ? Well, said he, I want to 
kno^v whether yoti think that he thinks so. [Great 
langiiter.J Said I, I certainly cannot answer for 
what Mr. Douglas thinks ; but now, my dear, good 
sir, vvill you allow lue to ask you one question? 
It Mr. Douglas is running as a candidate for 
the Presides y, and if he is canvassina for him- 
self, and if you a.>^k him whether he thinks he 
is "oing to carry the Ntate of New Yoik, which 
is nece.s>ary to his success, what else can he tell 
you except that he thinks he will? [Renewed 
laughter, j So I do not doubt that these South- 
ern .statesmen or politicians think that they a-e 
going to dissolve the Union. But I tliink they 
are iioing to do no such thing. And I will teii 
you in a very few words why I think so. 



He who, in this country, -thinks that this gov- 
ernment, this Constitution, can be thrown down, 
and that this union of states can be dissolved, 
has first no faith in the Constitution ; he has no 
faith in the Union ; no faith in the people of the 
states; no faith in the people of the United 
States ; no faith in loyalty ; no faith in freedom ; 
no faith in reason ; no faith in jubtice ; no faith 
in prudence ; no faiih in virtue. I am not un- 
willing to see the number of that class of the 
American people brought out, so that we may 
see them altogether. 

For mj" part, I, on the contrary, have faith in 
the Constitution ; faith in the Union ; faith in 
tlie ])eople of the states and of the nation ; faith 
ill freedom; faith injustice; faith in. virtue, 
and faith in humanity. The Coustitirtion and 
the Uniim have stood eighty years, only upon the 
foundation of such a faitli existing among the 
American people. It will stand and survive this 
presidential election, and forty presidential elec- 
tions afterward. Yes, I trust tliey will stand a 
hundred and a thousand, because the people, 
^ince this government was established, have 
grown wiser, more ju.vt, more humane, and more 
virtuous than they were wJieu it was first estab- 
j lished. [Great applause.] 



GOV. SEWARD^S SPEECH AT AUBUM 



THE EIGHT BEFORE THE BATTLE. 



Cir/rZ-^ns wilh faeep, -J^bether ycnng or old, yet 
stiii fttodliar faces : I have been a wanderer of 
I-Ue. Frsia our owq laughing hooiQ here on 
the banks of ibe Oivasco, to where the G'een 
MouQiams cast tii^ir Jpagohened shadows over 
the Connectical- at Witdior. After a stay thsre 
too shoch for ie8?i, buo uoi for happines><, to tie 
sp?i]og.i of the Penovs '.ot Proaa ihe Penobscot 
c-^Ci^piog rr breaking through nets sec for m?) 
by not uafrsenijly haoda, t) reaew my oath of 
fenlty ai. m>^' Lotaba ol the eller aud tba yoanger 
Aiams at Q lincy, Froxi Miiiaciase'uti Bay 
acroi.f. greea iiUli and gr^aaar valleys, orer tae 
Hai^ou, across tae Seaeci, no and dova the 
G-aass?e, &wi coi.»uag tag Lakes of Oabari), 
Ede, Hur 'Q, aad MicUigin, do>vQ the lUiaois to 
its G Dllii n3e Wita tae M'.:*sisiippi, up the bhri- 
velled iii'-er oo wlaare it breiki into rapids ; and 
ab )ve liena whi^re me foaj'-aios which supply 
eqitily taa S.. Lfivyreace aai the Mi.-ssiasippj, 
g isJi irom Ibe earth. A srosi !VliQne80"ja aucl 
Ij^a, do.ya lo i'Jp.brabkt and Kta^.ai, wisere 
AJiprcvi civdiz itioD, «q 5t3 verge, U scaling 
t'a« Rj^ky ;VIoa itdus, and t)riQgi-ig forth titneir 
pfeciuuj treasure oi silver and gold ; and thence 



back again with an eager returning spirit to the 
Metropolis where sits ihe soul that sends forth 
all the mighty energy of that civiiiz ilion ; and 
then by a hurried flight back again in the night 
to flud my home leafless under ihe wiod^s of au- 
taoQu, bat already gathering force to put. forth a 
greener and broader foliage la the comic g 
year. 

These are my travels You will af k oae " what 
hive you seen ; whit havj you learned V Rath- 
f r, my friends, ask ma vvaat I nave not seen, and 
waat uakuort^n, or bat imperfectly uuderstood 
bafor?, I have noli learned no*v and fully uoder- 
sianl. I hiV3 seeo a gre.t uatioa— a greater 
naiioa than I saw last year, aUiboujh then I 
traveled the Old World fro a the D ud Sen. to the 
pillars of Herculea ; a greater natioa taan has 
exi-t3d in ancieat or iu modera liaaes I saw 
nn on y the cotiatry, its forests, its mountains, 
n^ rivers, it3 lakes, aad its prairies, bat I saw iw 
pftoplf^, raf^n, wom^n and children, many, msny 
millioia of every natioa «nd of every derivation. 
You. wdi ask me *• did you fiad ihia peOjjle pros* 
p-rouj and happy V Ask yourselves, for you 
are of them ; yea are free j you are indabtrious, 



69 



you are intelligent ; and therefore you are proF- 
perous RDd happy, and fo are the-y. It would 
consume twPDty- four hours to tell you in detail 
what I hsve seen, and we have not twenty-fou 
hours. There U work to be done before th? 
evening star shall rise to-morrow and you and I 
must have a band in ft, rs T am sure we b&v- 
heart's in it — have we eg'; 1 [Cri s of " yes, yes," 
ard applause J I saw th's cruntry and this peo 
pie in their best (?ay>',Dot feeble, fitky, scrawny. 
but; a ration in the foil maturity of ycutbfnl 
vigor, I eaw this people engnged ia a great 
achievement ppculiar to themselveis — one perfect- 
ly successfal by no ( t>ter nation on earth, and 
one almost unattcmpted by any cation of ancipnfc 
or modern times. They were engaged in choos- 
ing roagistrates ar.d l-^gi&lRtors who fchoald m^ke 
and expcnte their lawf), and Ftrangest of all, a 
chief mpgls^.rate to preside over thfm. 8uch a^ 
in fvthpr climes men call " Ttc^ar," " Emperor," 
and " King," a^d come to tbirk " Divine." I 
met fimorg tbf m them the heir apptrent of a 
mon^'Tc'h upon wboie rep.lms the bvlo never s?ts, 
iopppctirg the curioos workings of this strgnse 
acbipvpirfpnt. I do cot kr;0w v:bat he tlionght, 
but I tell von what I then jht es I sa'^ Irm bn k- 
ing on. I said to myself " if thiii system sbonld 
continue and work well f » r a few brief years 
more it wiil work th« downfiiU ard extlugoish- 
ment of your dynisty, and not only of ycur 
dynasty, bat of bU the dynasties ot all the 
mntiarchi-^s and all the aristocradeg oa the f-.ce 
of the hRbitRble globe, then, Ihenceforth and for- 
ever. [A.p:)kuse, 

Oh, teliow-cit'z'Ds, how importisnt to Ih-^ int-^- 
rests of the human race is it that this experi- 
ment shall C'ntiDue to vork well. 

Bat you «>!1 say, "tell us of this election; 
how will It result; will the Repnbrcan party 
and tb*^ ceuse of Freedom prevail tc-morrow '?" 
Again I say, ask yourselves. The ee.nt?ment of 
Freedom, the emotions of virtue, are vigorous 
and active, and hope is buoyant over the face * f 
all the Fife States. AU of them havo practical 
ly f'p ken already, and 8pok>-^h for Lincoln and 
Freedom. [Glreat applause ] But enough have 
not yefe spoken to decide tbe cDnte^t. It i^ for 
you, for the people of Niw Fork, to decide it. 
If ii be loRi. the responsibility, sad and sorrow- 
ful as iii woull be, woutd fall npoa us. If it is 
woo, it is thB cr )wn, uot of one caffipaigo, bat 
tbe Giowa of a straggle in which you and I have 
befn enaaged ia darker days, had uader more 
unpripitioas auspice.i, far a period of thirty 
years 

Bat, fellow citizens, this hcur of conversatir n 
betvyeen you and mysfdf, neighbors as we are, is 
to') 'bort, and eo ues too sc-ldo0i to be occupied 
with ihi^ rleSails, hovsrever escitiu'g, cf the popu 
lar eleitioQ which U to be claaed to-mjw-a^. 
You have been ac; u tamed fceretofor^ to iaduU^e 
me wih broader, hiiiher thcui^bt^, and noble.' 
specalati'-ns. The question, locking throngh 
this el c ion to morrow, acd forward through 
many e;ecticn.s pre6.-3es homa upon u-, — whatever 
may be ihe result, auspicioas as I am almost 
surpi it wd! be, — Hh'iU f eedoTi, ju tic ' and }m- 
miaity ul'..iraaT.eJy ftnd in the ead rn^^Y.w- gr^ 
these R' pu'dic n insfciluMo 'S of ourM fsafe ai;d 
periiEi er.t 1 I ha^e sou,jbt and entered the 
H li of Prophe'^y. I may n"t teli you jast 
wh-re it. staad^, bat t^ds much I can say that ilp 
entrance ia th.ougii nasiva fareit shadesj from 



the waters edge of a deep and flowing river. I 
entered it, not irreverently, not Bncorsci! us of 
tbe preFutisplion of att'^mptina to exulor the 
wl'l of the God, whose rale, ho^^pv^ ra^n may 
deny or prcfr-?s, i^ higher Itw. [^p-lsu^e] 
The two gigantic fisures, Time 8Ld D ^t'ny, 
which guarded the apprr ach to the al ar speir- 
ed to relax their grim features as I pRSfed,.and 
the one dropped his ecythp, f-rd the other 
balanced ^or a moment the hr ur gla^?, wbicb ho 
held in his hand. I learned from tb^ o'8.ole 
that tbe powers abo^e favor tbe perpptui'ion of 
thesis institutions, and that they are r.evpr to fall 
by the hand of any fcrrign fnerriy; that tbey 
are to bo faved or to be lost by the ac'ioa of tbe 
American people ; that a gr fit f ang'^r, « dRn5:er 
that has been lorg gatherlrg is at tbLs v ry mo- 
Hsf-nt being passed, end that this dar.ger once 
rsrd, there is assurard <f lop2 life, aye, of 
injmortality to the institutic ns of Am-^rfc.-n free- 
dom. [Great appl^aiej I afk-d for a sign, 
bnt the oracle replied to me, " why do this 
generation look for a sign 1 I sey unto y( u ihat 
DO sign shad be given to tbis g<^re=atior, but a 
rule shall be given to them a^f qrra'e t e^^-ry 
^m'-'^.f-encv. ard ib'ft rnV is let ike American 
peopJe rule their civn spirit " [Applau-*^' J 

'):i\i pecp-e are tun.an, ard D canf-e lb-, y are 
human, they have ac^ice^;tal • nd t'^mprra'y in- 
terests and pBss'ons and prfjidiies to midead 
them ; but abo, because they a'^e hcim n. they 
have reason t:* ccndoct thera t;:r. ugb all lempt- 
aticns rnd aU perils, in the wsy of wl-d m. A 
myeterious Provid- nee bar. perroitt'^d, does al- 
ways permit, error to ex?st everywhe-e, cotem- 
poranecusly with truth, urocg Rifb righf. free- 
dom with Slavery; and beiTfeen these c fi r n-, 
powers there is al^vays an irrepreJ:fc!r.lr c^i fl ct. 
[Applatise.] That c^^' fl c;, is the trial of htitxsan 
vsrttje ; a irlurcph cf ihe good over the tad ron- 
slitutes the perfection of fcuoiari nature Sbv ry 
was pTobablv? esseLtid to the success of tht' ia- 
stttutions of Repablicaciim. That e-ptiru'illy 
pri:vokiDg cclA ct, as c.yuWi uaDy f'ti0iub;t d vir- 
tu?', and the love of irefdriB. The ih\.\H-r^, re- 
jecting the tinister couiipel* of interest ac>d sup- 
pressing passiens and prfju ic\, serve, ed tbe 
continent when tbey established oar govern- 
ment, and they adopted the policy which alone 
Wi^s possible. 

They could not extirpate slavery at a blow, 
Proba'dy it bad been uawi>e if ihey hid at- 
tempted it; but they hvd f!d>>pted a policy 
m-Trked equally by sagacity, atid by beneyol-^nce 
which is told ia a vry few words. Ifs < ffect 
wa^ to be th--* abridgement o? th« lo^s^er, and 
duration of Slivesy by practicab'e, p^ac.^ful 
me.^ns, ar*d the ioviuoraiiou ard ul ima'e estfeb- 
ii-bment of univer?^al freedoai. [G; e t - pi -xx^^ j 
E-^nv ibis was lo be dote, r-q-ine- a>> f w woi'ds 
to tell. Tbe African s/sive t.-^ade, wbii-'h *;-.s iben 
exercised in briDgir'2 f^laves to do the cid i^^atiors 
■ --f the whole r-'ntivent — .- nd if i:, had co'^in- 
aed, ?roald bave ccvered tU3 land with ^ivage 
If icius, f-to'en from their Lutive laiv^ — '.v-s to 
be ab H*ht d after tvpeoly years, dujiog which 
tlr.ce the Arreri an people might, fs they evuld, 
jHO^ure fiupp ie.s of free Ishor irom oppressed 
ar.id groaoinj Europe, to supply its f.-lcC^ The 
Statics were eLC:>uag''-«i and sii.uuiaiea to p'-o- 
5de, by acts cf g-.a-ud eaiaoc p .lion, lor the 
reaovai of s'iRvery .>.dAg°>tb.'^r. Ttie whal.^ of 
the public domai^-jthen u.noccui-'iedj Ijing lortli- 



70 



west of fbe Ohio r-vsr, was set apart exdasivelj 

for freri.m, and fcr tbe erection of Dt^w and 
fntnre fr-a Srat-M, Free emiijrAtioa from all 
the niiocs of Earope, of wh.t'VPr fdth or 
lar.£ru:iee, was imit'^k by the permii^sion gher. 
to t*ie rmTgrant to pledi^e bis 1- b ^r for a term . 
of years, so that he miabt pay tbe cost of his 
pase?-?ga. And to rII these wf.;s adced tbat booc 
of boo'=«, that offer, the riclie-^t that arjy natioa 
OTpr hrd ti") aiva, — an eqtsal cii'Iz^a^'hip by nata- 
ra]iz^i:ion to the iHGmfgi'rt-nt of cvbatever race or 
n£im-:», or lineage, -Rith the nntwe bore. 

Yea p,p<i how sijnpie tb!'? Fys eta wis. MarV, 
BOW, while I te^U yon in a lew won-s, bow e&e - 
tiva i'. -?/',a. Wifchio t;.7ftnty years trie African 
elavo t,rr:,fle ceased, ar.d never mi til one y«^ar ago 
did tib.3 soil fif America again bear tbe tvpgd of 
a Dat-5^e African bon<]ojan. Seven of the S-atrs 
rapid;.? removed slavery by prospective lavs, 
which, while they deprived no man of v,bat b«,^ 
called his prrperty, bnt left bis slave to be l>i^ 
slave for lie, still in a period of twenty.fi?e 
years ihere rrmaintd on the soil of tboj^e Sr.ateM 
not. OT)^ rative born or ituporvf d African f^lave 
Ard w* erra'=i, in this State of N: w Y-akof oars, 
on tbed^y v;ben i?; b?Gi.me independeot, ever;^ 
se^'ontpf nth in,babit?.at was a slave. In the y«=ar 
1825, no one slave was fonfcd upon its S'il. 
[Appl.<u-r.] And the redemption came un- 
der th« in^iratron of tbat libf^rai ia^, fn^m G^^r- 
many. Fr/.^ne, Holland, E-gland, Scotlacd and 
Ireland, and thfy became cstu^'alized witboct 
qne^tion as t'' their former ailefeiance, or their 
reIlii<inH a!~b, anct tbey are now our breibrrr, 
a:od by 'ies of kioored are mixed ond mingled 
with Ibe American people- There is fca-cely 
one man rr womar, wf-.o can trace to a perentaop 
of one p-Rtion of Euf-ope an undivided Unesae 
Tbe bJood of the Dane and Hua£aTi.-ic — the 
Irishm.'n and tbe German — tbe Pr^n'^bmaD ano- 
Engli'^b)-8T]-— .are in'.erminitled until we have be- 
co ue tbe descendar ts and representatives of en- 
lightene' christian nations throcghoui the whole 
continent of Earope. 

And th?n five new Shat'^s rosenpon^thatpiiblsc 
domain, .^nd sll of tbeoa Free States ; ard th'i' 
proce-i<^ gtill being' c^i'tinned iba'. Sve, added to 
the other sc^-pn which had eoDancipated, making 
twelve, baa already been increased, until where- 
as twelve of ihe original thirteen Si-ates were 
Slave States, now eighteen of the 8:ates are 
Free S^.ates, and on'y Sfceen are Sliy^ Bfcates. 
As it bag been orilered wisely, so ail was goir.g 
on prosperously and at tbe exoirauon of th-^ 
present cettury, Slavery w;*nld either hpvi? 
ceased to exi^t, or have been larjguiaht&g or dy- 
ing in tbe mvlst of what woald hdve been prac- 
tically univr-rs-il liberty, b-it for one of tbosc 
siogu'ar accidents, one of those strange c-ventc 
which, oc-;urri( g in the coarse of humaa affairs, 
produces a reaction, and for a time the cgu*"- 
which wa^ suppressed, goes forward, an^l Cat' 
cau.se whizh wa. ezpscted to triuospb, reredej; 
That a^cidi-nt was nothing more tbaa that an 
in2r»n«oui ciuntryman of ours, and a lover ot 
F.ppdota fjs much aa j^ou or I, invented a ma- 
chine by which be cou'd, wii.n.g rente-'' e'UK-«, rx 
tract tbe &eed8 from tbe fi --'■rri -Jn cfi".)} •,-,,;, 
and tbs^, givincif a ebeaper value to c -.'O'l; .'i! 
incrv ^-.irvf the demand for it, fcr fabrics of hu 
m\D. wp. ir, c.'^t':n.n became the produr^tion o: 
slave labor ia tix S'.ave Sia'es. or in a pcitlon of 
them, and beaaoie King in those States, com- 



manded emancipation to cease, shut foreigners 
out from their ports, d'^raanr-ed a repc'iidirg of 
all. the la^:-8 wbicb f.nbld 8iav*^ry to spread ever 
the Airerican eolj, demanded room for new 
Slave Territovies and rew Slavf^ States, ar-f' be- 
gan the iira'dfal woik of pr^p ir^itioa for the re- 
storation of the Aftican Slave Tr.xde. 

Yon know too well to n^ei that I shcuid re- 
peat it. the rapidity ard vUlence of tbKt r^^ac- 
tion. You know bow >t bou^bt up psrties, and 
statesmen and cspitglistg tiaongh aii of the free 
S!.ates, and moulded thfm ss tbe image- maker 
mouMs the moister.ef! plasier. to it« dem;>r.(is. 
Yi'U know how that u.'.der the Vrry first eST; e.st, 
vehement, violent deiB*i.nd of Siavtry. Mv^^^uiri 
and Arkansas were admitted into tre U.'.ion, 
Slave States, by a people unner the-iLfla; i ce of 
terror, who had, onlj' twenty ye&rs beiorf^,. abo- 
li'jh^d the African Sla^e Trade, mA dsri'd 
'Siaveiy another aero of Ampiivan scii Y;u 
know bow Tf^xs-s, a tree country in Mex'co. was 
overrun, fir.-t by filaveholders with slaves, find 
-.hen brought ii'to Cue Aaieiican Uoi^r, wrh (bo 
CTuHent of 5 ourselves, bat five Slava Stites 
might be ttiade out of its f'-il You know bow 
G liifcrnia and Mvxico and Ut-ah, fr^e laudt^. fr«;o 
soil, inhabiied by men of free syeech ard fr?© 
tboughr, ^ere conqutred and broug^-t in'o tb© 
Union with tha expectation — oily b ffled by ite 
perseverance of a few men in cesprdr, of wL.-ra 
I wss one— of estKbiisbing Slavery up'-n tl)6 Pa- 
.ific coast. [Applause] And you know, fiu: 11/. 
how Presl^ier'ts and ORbmets, Mi» itel<»i8 ard 
F: reign Minifcters, and at last tbe Judees. catjie 
to coDf«=ss a faiih, alien from tbe CN^nstiu^ion, 
and alien from the Rpirit of all our ir-sti-mi^-na, 
that, the normal corn tbn cf every T«=Tritory un- 
d r the fl?s-g of tbe United States is not Freedom 
bu^ Slavery, and that '"^o pov^tr c-xuttg in the 
soil, no power ex'-siing in o'her Staie^, no power 
exi-.4irg in the Gorgress of th'>^ United Sia es, or 
in Roy department cf the Federal GoveiLment, 
can cbalienga i,'., ard &&y, '' How came ym, or 
what do you here '?" 

This was tbe re action, and it cnlminaAed only 
i^ix year.s ago. Never, never wa-i li ijati on mote 
tboroiTghly demctfdised. Thf Whig party, rb^t 
had aQ'eettrd syspaiby f.'4 Freedom, la t red 
;ind 'ailed in the hour of trial, ind went cown. 
The D-mocratie party, bolder than evt; , benrme 
the ucblusbrig advocate of S'i8,ver7, ces.s- d to 
be Lmger, or to pretend to be, a patty of Dti- 
man freedom, but became a pany of human 
bonds. There was no parly for Freedom, j'-ai 
ouvies were e^^'milered between Amoricai' f'^ec- 
born freeyjen, and the volnntary dt,;z:'? s, hrA 
at tbe tirjse when both should have been eng;ig- 
e'l in regcuing the Gonsiitut'on., which tecured 
t^'^e soil fc-r tbem and their cfciiiJrer, end tLeir 
^hildren'ii children, as a patrimony for Fif-idon, 
;,!iey were cDgrjged in interLecine bosjtii^ti^^s, ihe 
only eff-^ct of w?.:; th coald be to let Slever'- no 
roaming over the vjTicle territories, [Ar;i:>;f;U3 '.[ 

Saca^ my frienrls, w a the real co=:ditjon of 
thiags when I arldressed jou in the P&ik en 
■iiont'-^ - ■•.eet, only four, years ato. You w- re a 
'bo;7g'«t!es, ar> excii,f:d, a b^waldi-re - peo; ]&... I 
-i^ ;i pr~-iy ):or'\v fi '■■'<' "' ' ■"- bu^ 1.^ was 

•util jealoasirs. It ^?a,3 lie cLky sivpe Ur F-ea- 
doTi, bat H fsuied, and it seerced as if it* iifiust 
f-iil though it "charmed Lever so wis^!?," to 
wia the American people. It seemtd to mo 



71 



then that I saw the good acgel of rny country 
risiDg up and bMoing her a VdSb farewell. 

But Eow all la chsnged. The el-naents of 
free(ii)m. which that Rf^ptiblfcan p^rtv took in g.t 
tbas day Pie so invigorating; fo rf rewind thfit 
they hiiVr: wi bin foar yeara m^Af* it a ra'gbty. 
yps, P.n t.ncoi querable host. [Gff-nt pppl&use J 
Ihev h-ivo t =k»:.n the reips of tJ^r» StalP! govern 
merit ia naost every one of the Free States, and 
they lay clete siego to ^h?A, are left ia the bar dc- 
of i>ia>ejy, They appear strong and vigorcn?, 
and lave already achie^^ed free speech, free 
thoi-gl.t and fiee debate in ihree. Sl'^^e States, 
Pplavvarp, Mayland and Mis^on'i [rr-:lonsed 
che r ], f nd the bat le recedes immf^dxateh af er 
tbia fnntest, fiom t.be Free States into t?e Slave 
St^.tes, and the slaveholders icstpsd of boas ii g 
tban tbf^y ire national, ana we, R-publi'-anS; a?e 
section-;!, areabeady beiiicDing to ftel what it 
is to be aiteoQpting to extend and iort>fy an in^'i 
tu* OD «l;;C'.ji Js |:U^ely sectional, irto Territories 
thiu, belo? g to the nation, sgaintt the will of the 
nalior-. [Applaose] 

It has leen long that this reaction has been 
wcrku g ; no n» history will bricgont ir to a rew 
light contrrverties tbat., to all srourd ns seemed 
to be ahrady buried in the past. Yon, hboriDg 
mf-v, fi'i (i fspecialiy yen of foreign biitb, naln 
ralize'd oi izecs, can jon teU me why it n that 
you .MVf^ tere amoDg thee^e men in tbi?i corQam- 
nity, ar d m the employ meut of laen whom J0!3 
accue*^o often Tvilb sjnapat^ y with tfca negro 
to 5< m- r>'f jndiee 1 Why is it thet jon are here 
in a hud that you caFi a land of ghnJit'orisfs ? 
"Why are ycu not in Virginia and in North Caro- 
lina Hrd m Sooth Csroiina and in L nijica, 
am 'I g tbp 8 ave diiver.^ whom yon applaod and 
approve for their inhnmajjity to the negro? It 
is tec u '*• Slavery will not to'^erate ore of yen 
upon its soil. [Applause.] Y< u njai-mfaeinrer^, 
whose nrdis have been put up, whose wheels 
h v^ be? n so often put in motic=n only to en- 
cooDtf^r hosUle legislation in Congress under the 
iofloeijce of the Slave power of tbe Slft^e SLates, 
will >< 11 tHl me why it is that the governrcent 
of the Uo-fed States maintains, as its true and 
seU]ed policy that an Ameiican ciiiz'^^n tcu^t 
ca'r;^ ali his ma erials to the roanufacturers atsi 
work; h p^ of Eaoland to be wronght up into 
fnbsics by ih*^' mecba ics, grtisans ard manu- 
faciuiers of Eofiiand, artd must seed his wh^at, 
his c as, hi^ b^ef srid h;s p^ ik to support tho^e 
mi'niifi.cturers in England, in^^tead of bringing 
thB educated and trained artists and wacbiniS'S 
of Eohjwd hereto setup hh mils, to pur. his 
wbefif in mo'Jon upon the bsnks of the Mo- 
h.a« k, thf^ 0wajiC0= the Seneca and the Niagara 
rivftrs 1 

The explanation is a si o pie one; slavery 
wajii- m little of the i' dustry of tbe vtbite maii 
in th-> n-lion as possible [C&eers ] Can you 
teli roe why it is that th^ expenses of thp govern 
m*- Lt, wr ir-h h .ve risers in the period 1 1 32 '• f ars 
ir(i\M up rciii n« of dollars, to eighiy, nicetv 
ar<^ a hi nd ed m lliocs of dolisrs fin? Urtl'y, DtU-i. 
he I V e ■ in ' uoh h way as to cii.conrpee Aoieri- 
on ra nnf ct-arfrs, and thr-t tbe defici»-':c , if' 
there he fry, cf revenue, must ^e p;,id out of 
the salf^S'i the public land8 ot toe U It^^d St;)tfs. 
Et «. d-b r Bnd a quaiter pf-r acre, wben there 
are 'it evi^ry city, in every town, in tvt ry villsge, 
atd in f Vf jy htrinlet of the ]?.rd, poor, nnfortu 
nata wbite jupd, with their famihes, seekicg and 



asking for a living ispon this public domain,— 
and Willing to convert it irto farns?.. jipMiRg and 
pav!?;g re^erue to the Uni'ed Stntrsl It is 
simply bfcusp* shivery is ur;V-i!lipg that the 
free 'i?hitip o^ar phcrJd go there,- f Apph-csp.] 

Can you fxcount for the obstinate re&b<anee 
io tbe enlargeir.ent cf Ihe Erl^canal, continued 
so long, on sny other grourd 1 

Can yr u tell nsf vehj it wns that twenty years 
Rao, thin ^hole State wa:== filled Tviih sl.-rm be- 
c^.use equal and free education wj^s be'rg cx- 
•e; dvd to the children of the C?^th^]?c ^'i-fi the 
foreigner, upon the groncd that-, pp thp r.hildren 
of the foreigner were to be fu'ure »3en:»-erfi of 
tbe Sta^e, it was Important, rot ffif''«iP to them 
•hiin to the State itself, that, they shot Id he pre- 
pared for citizensbip 'i Oh ! then the Bible waa 
^n cenger. Ob ! ther the Protrr-^trntchnrfb was 
to go rown. All this hostUity to E-neRtfnn was 
the sr gsf stion of si" very in rrf?fr Iha- irce ^hit© 
nofn toight cot come to s'^ell the popn'stlon of 
tbe free States, ard swr;rm ?nto tbe n?^ Si.f-;tes 
beyond rbe Aliegbary Mountams. [Applaufe,] 

But all this is er ded. The 3cpnts. a^ d the 
psrtips p?bo were d<=ceived, misled f.nd pf rverted, 
who oppoFed the interests of fre(-dor/?, have all 
within s^x yenrs f-llen ard dhappfarpd. The 
Wblii party once cherished by som^ny of us, 
>rid relied upon with fsith and hop-^ pgairst ^vi- 
derce, proved nrffjthfrd. at lai^t std pen>hed, 
'md I krow not one sourd thirk^ng man, how- 
ever ,- much as he wasattfcbed loi% thftfchiments 
its loss, Tbe American p^rty that Fougbt to de- 
ceive itself witb thr idea that iteonld secnie for- 
bearance for freedor/i in the new Rlli??! c*^- fo^ med 
with slavphold^rs in the ^outb, sudder ly, even 
more srsdder'ly disappeared, ard tbeie is not one 
man livicg to viB(5'C^.te its m*^mory, Ard so the 
Democradc party had a form ard cxtjtence a 
yefr ?g'x Where is It cow. It has chan^-ed its 
f^am PS often a-^ a gni'ty dream. It w,qs finale, 
nrilfd, unterr5fied std violent a year Fgo, Six 
r, or.ths pgss' d and. it wove two f^ rrrs in hostile 
attitude ageitst each other. S?x m' r/ibs hUer 
the two bave disappeared, acd nowitiv ic^^here, 
[Laughter and cbeer^ ] An opposition h-- era c- 
ized but it is an orgrnzation, not of tbe Dfrno- 
cralic psr'y hut of tbree parties. It pre.»^ents 
? ot one 'Findidste, but three candidfites f-<.-r Pres- 
uiect. [Laughter.] It comes up to fight its 
flrgt, last atid desperate battle with the Ef publi- 
can party which is ergpged in the effort snri de- 
termicRtion to elect a President by a a;?,) rity of 
votes ; arjd this bybrid party comes np ard puts 
into tbe hands of the Ejectors, ballots 'or se-Rttpr« 
ing the votes, not corcerjtrst'ng them ; to d^-feat 
the ele«?t?OD of a Predslent of the Unit^-d Si'^tes 
bpctuse yon canrot agree whom, yu ?^i)l fleet. 
Strange oonfusicn of the times, tbi?? !, Hdve you 
ever s-tudied tbe present creed of the opposition 1 
I will e' deavor to recite it fcr yon :— 

" I believe in intervening m the TersilOTies of 
the U. 8 for slavery ; I aho fully beJievo ro non- 
iintervenirg in the Territorleg of tbo U. S for 
slavery, [k'Dgh-er.J atd I further believe tbat it 
is not rigbt either to intervere cr to no*^^ inter- 
v< ne. [ripcewed laB^diter ] Each rf tbes*^ tbree 
articles of faith is efSf-rtial at d of favi g hef hh 
io the nation. Be that is faithfiil tcnssr besieve 
:hem s)l, and he that is faithful mu< t believe one 
and r?jef t the other two, [roars of kng^^u r ] I 
believe in Stepbrn A, Pruilas fs a c^r*" id: l^ fcr 
the Piesidenty of the U. S-., &nd I pleoge Giye.elf 



Y2 



to vote for him to the e3:c1o?1on of everybody 
else. I also believ • in Jebn C Breckenridgp. 
and I plf*ir?sa njyse'f to vote for him to the ex 
Condon of Stppben /:.. Douglas and of fVfrybod? 
elsp ; and I also equally and InnplicUly believe 
it} John Bell as a canlidate for Presideot of thf 
U. S., and I ^Ud.oe) myself to vote for him to tbr 
exc^naiou of Dcrnalis and Breokenridge. I 
promise faithfaHy to vote for them all, acd to 
vot?, at the same time, asalnst either oce, ex- 
e-^pt the one not desiooated as my choice." 
[Laughter and great applause,] 

Now here la the trrnifcy In Baity and unity in 
trinity, of the political church, jnst cow came 
to U5 by the light cf a new revelation, an<^ 
christened " Fasion." [Laaijhter and cheers ] 
A^id this " Fns'on" paivy, what is the motive to 
wlich it appeals *? Yoii may g"^ wlh roe ioto 
the streets to Digbt and follow this^ LUile Giact?, 
who go with therr torch ll = hts and their flauni- 
icg banners of '' Popular Sovereignty ;" or yoc 
may go wiui the sniiiller and more select aD(^ 
modest band who jio for Ereclrem'id; eand slave- 
ry ; o." you may fellow the music of the claaging 
belh, [!f!UgbtP?] and, rlr&rge to say, they wil; 
all hrlDg you into one common chamber. [ Laugh- 
ter.] VS'ben you get there ycu wjll hear onh 
this emotion of the hunsan hf art appealed to, 
iear, — fp-ir that if you ekct a Pre,%ident of th^^ 
UoiSed Sfcat?s aecordiog to the constilut'on an^ 
the laws to-morrow, you vejll wake up the nex' 
day and fiad that y<^u have no country for him 
to preside over. [Laoght^r] la that cot :■■ 
strange motive fcr an American patriot to appea' 
tol And ia that sim'^^ ball^ acnid the jirgon o- 
tbr.;^e dtSGOi-dant m^m'^^.f-ra of the Fusion party. 
yoti m]\ hear one argument, and that argument 
is, t,l .it EO euro aa you are so perverse as to cfis' 
3?ou? vote i§intly, lawfully, feonestlv, as you oushi 
to do, for ona candidate for the Presidency, in- 



5:tead of scattering it among three candidates, 
^o that DO President may be elected, this Union 
■<hsll come down over your heads, involvicg jou 
ind us in a common ruin. 

Fellow citizens, it is time, high time, thnt we 
know whether this is a constitutional gfVfra- 
ment under which w^i live It, is high time that 
we know since the Union is threatened, who are 
its friends nnd wbo are its enemifs. The Re- 
onblican party who propose in ihc old appcin ed 
(^onstitntional way to choope a President, are 
eve?y man of them loyal to the Union. The dis- 
loyalists, wherever they msy b^, are those who 
are opposed to the Republican party and lit- 
empt to prevent the election of a President. I 
know that our good and esteemed neighbors — 
ileaven knows I have cause to respect and es- 
teem p.nd honor and love them as I do, for such 
neighbors as even my Democratic neighbors, no 
other man ever had — I know that they do not 
avow, nor do they mean to support, or think 
they are Eupponing disunioniets. But I tell 
;.hf m that he who proposes to lay hold of the 
pillars of the Union and bring it down iu'o luin, 
■B a di^'unionist; that every man who quotes 
him, and uses his threats and his menaces as an 
argument against our exercise of our doty, is an 
^bettor, unconscious though he may be, of dis- 
anion ; and that 'when to mo row's fun shall 
*iave set and the r.ext morning's sun shall have 
risen upoa the American people, rejaiciog in the 
4fction of Abraham Lincoln to the Pref-idency, 
[preloTiged cheers ] those men who to day gym- 
p^thiza with, uphold, fupport and excuse the 
1isunioni?ts, will have to make a sudden choice 
i.nd choose whether, in the languRiie of the Sen- 
ator from Georgia, they will go f r t'easen and 
s > make it rpspeciable or whrth^r they will go 
wlvh wi for Freedom, for the Conatitation, and 
for Eieraal Union. 



AMERICANS REPUDIATE FUSION! 



SPEECH 



OF 



HON. JAMES 0. PUTNAM, 



AGAINST THE 



SALE OF THE AMERICAN PARTY TO THE DOUGLAS 

DEMOCRACY. 

Delivered in Rochester, August 8, at a Meeting called by over 
Four Hundred Americans, 



The following resolutions were presented by 
RoswELL Hart, Esq., and adopted witli im- 
mense applause : 

Resolved. That as Americans we supported Mr. Fill- 
more ia 1850, because of his fidelity, when at the head 
of the Goverament, to the grreat measures of peace 
vz-hich, uader the auspices of Mr. Clay, were pronounced 
a "final settlement" of the slavery question; because of 
nis manly opposition to the repeal of the Sacred Com- 
pact of lS2ii, -which secured the territory north of 36 
degrees and 3t) minutes, to freedom; because we be- 
lieved that if elected, he would bring the wliole power 
of his administration lo secure justice to every section, 
and interest of the country. And we here tender him 
our tha!iks for so justly laying the responsibility of all 
the evils which have afflicted the country for the last 
six years, in connection with the Slavery question to the 
repe'al of the Missouri Compromise. His letter to the 
^Uhiiin meeting in New York, in February last, justifies 
all we have ever claimed for his justice and magnani- 
mity. 

Resolved, That, holding Stephen A. Douglas directly 
responsible for the Kepeal of the Missouri Compromise 
and for the inauguration of the lievolutionary policy 
which has thrown down so many of the safeguards <»f 
the Constitution, converting it from an instrument of 
justice between the different sections of the country into 
a'l instrument of slave propagandism, at the expense of 
the equality of the States, and the rights of free men 
and free labor, we will never yield him, directly or in- 
directly, our support ; we will never be the dupes of a 
bargain which promises ten votes to a man we respect 
and honor, while it creates twenty-five men of equal 
power pledged to the fortunes of Mr. Douglas. 

Reso'ved, That in the Chicago Platform on the sub- 
ject of Slavery, we find principles for which, as Ameri- 
cans, we have always contended, and we accept it as a 
sound basis of political faith— faithful to the Constitu- 
tion and the whole country. 

Reso'.ved, That we support Abraham Lincoln because 
we see in his whole political life a sound, comprehensive 
Statesmanship, a national heart that embraces in his af- 
fections his whole country, and an eminent sense of 
public justice. We find him firmly committed to the 
great principles of preserving freedom to territory now 
free, and of resistance to the revolutionary doctrines of 
the Democratic party, we find him as firmly maintain- 
ing all the balances and compromises of the Constitu- 
tio'n made by our fathers, whose maintenance alone can 
preserve in its integrity this glorious Republic 

Hon. James 0. Putnam, of Chautauqua, was 



then introduced by the President, and received 
round after round of applause. He spoke as 
follows : 

Gentlemen, your call is in these words : 

"Of those who have been hitherto identified with the 
American party, but who, since the recent attempt to 
merge that organization into the Democratic party, and 
seeing no practical way in which they can aid in the 
election of Bell and Everett, have determined to sup- 
port Lincoln and Hamlin for the Presidency and Vice- 
Presidency of the United States, as the best aud only 
alternative left for their political action." 

I am happy to meet you on this occasion. I 
know the ground on whicli I tread ; I know the 
men at wliose summons I have appeared here ; 
men who formed a part of that body of one hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand of the citizens of 
New York who in 1856 sought to restore peace 
to the country and justice to its Administration, 
by the election of Millard Fillmore. Men who 
recognize in no man living an infallible teacher ; 
on whose necks is fotind no collar inscribed 
" Born thrall of Cedric." Men of independent 
thought, who spurn alike the thraldom of reli- 
giotis hierarchies and of political juntas. Men 
trained for the most part in the school of Henry 
Clay, who learnedjrom his lips those sentiments 
of national justice and national brotherhood, 
which have inspired, and ever will inspire, their 
political action. Men, I will add, who bring to 
the Republican altar no apologies for their politi- 
cal past, and no hostages but their own true 
hearts for their political f nture. You say in your 
call that it is your purpose in the campaign of 
1860, to vote for Abruham Lincoln. Your organ- 
ization to which you adhered as I adhered so 
long as it had a single flag waving, as an inde- 
pendent power, has gone down under the flood 
of current events. 

There is no American party, it has no candi- 
date for the Presidency, and all its members 



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have melted or will melt away into one of the 
two great parties which, are contesting for New 
York. For, gentlemen, there are but two parties 
in this state. Virtually there are but two candi- 
dates — Lincoln and Douglas, With all the re- 
spect I entertain for Mr. Bell, I say he has no 
party in New York. He has the shadow of one, 
it is but a shadow, its substance is Douglas. He 
has some friends who say they have secui-ed ten 
electoral votes to aid in his election, but with the 
same breath, they confess that tliey create twenty- 
five men to strike him down in the Electoral Col- 
lege. It may seem a serious and manly game to 
those who phiy it, but to us who refuse to unite 
in thus garlanding our ancient friend for the altar 
of his enemies, it seems the broadest farce ever 
enacted before high Heaven. Gentlemen, I too, 
shall vote for Abraham Lincoln ; not because I 
indorse everything that every Republican ora,tor 
has uttered on the stump or elsewhere ; not be- 
cause I approve of every measure which some 
members of the party have sought t:> engraft on 
State Legislation ; not because I have changed 
my own views upon the questions which arose 
in 1850 to divide the Whig party, and wliich 
entered more or less into the discussions of the 
canvass of 1856 ; not because I have grown less 
national in my political sympathies or senti- 
ments ; not because I think '■ the universal ne- 
gro " is my social equal, or in any State where 
the Anglo Saxon race is the dominant one, he 
should be made in all respects their political 
equal. Others may vote for him, for any or all 
of these reasons, but as for me and my house, I 
sustain him because I believe him to be a just 
and adequate man ; because on the question of 
the day the Republican party at the Chicago 
convention planted itself on ground which I be- 
lieve to be just and national, and because I be- 
lieve the country needs repose on the subject of 
slavery, in its legislative halls, and that this end- 
less agitation of the slavery question can never 
be suppressed until we overthrow the arch agi- 
tators, the chief thunderers on this Negro Olym- 
pus — the leaders of the Democratic party. 

Gentlemen, I do not come here to disguise any 
fact or any sentiment, but to present my views of 
the questions of the day as frankly as my nature 
is capable of presenting them, I start then with 
this proposition : My support of Lincoln, in view 
of the principles involved in the contest, is to 
me, a New York American, the natural, the logi- 
cal sequence of my support of Mr. Fillmore in 
1856. The corollary of the proposition is this : 
To vote for twenty -five electors pledged to Mr. 
Douglas, thus giving him about one-sixth of all 
necessary to secure his election, however the 
dose may be sweetened to prevent nausea, would 
be to belie my whole life, and sacrifice every 
principle for which, as an American, I contended. 

First, I ask you, what class of men north and 
south did Mr. Fillmore represent ? The old 
Whig or Clay party south who had no sympa- 
thies with the slave propagandising element of 
the Democratic party, or with the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise, but having an earnest 
purpose to rebuke that stupendous wrong by the 
elevation of a man known to be hostile to it. 
Men whose fortunes were bound up with the 
South, but still of just and moderate views of 
the Henry Clay .type on the whole group of the 
slavery questions. Men who stood, as they 
now stand, ready to put down disunion wherever 
and whenever it shows its hydra head, and who 



then felt as we felt, that the only way to restore 
peace to the country, was to overthrow the 
Democratic parly, whose whole life and breath is 
agitation. 

The American party at the North, and espe- 
cially in New York, were men, the great body 
of whom, in relation to the revolution inaugu- 
rated in 1854, and in relation to the outrages of 
border ruffianism in Kansas, and in relaiiou to 
the great doctrines of the Fathers, that Freedom 
is the creature of divine law, the normal condi- 
tion of every inch of territory, and slavery the 
creature of local law, sympathised with the Re- 
publicans. Those were living issues, and upon 
them they cordially agreed. There were dead 
questions, not issues, growing out of the Com- 
promise of 1850, which were galvanized into 
spasmodic action in that campaign, about which 
they difiered with the Republicans, But they 
had no practical bearings, and were only of ser- 
vice to intensify and embitter the canvass. 

Every act of the Democratic party and of its 
leaders, from 1854 down through the canvass of 
1856, was calculated to inflame to madness the 
northern mind. The repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise promising peace, and giving us civil war, 
making the territory of Kansas tlie theatre of un- 
paralleled outrages and wrongs, for a time jcstled 
the most conservative men from their calm 
anchoraye, while they kindled into devouring 
flame the great mass of the opposition. Then 
succeeded the attack of Brooks on Sumner, in 
the Senate, the most dastardly and base act of 
cowardice that ever degraded a legislative hall, 
an act sanctioned, honored and rewarded by the 
Democratic South. Then it was that a storm of 
indignation arose at the North, which when at 
its htnght would have swept before it the pillai-s 
of the government, had they stood in its way. 
The Presidential campaign came on the heel of 
all these events, and it took a man storm proof 
to resist the current that swept devouringly by 
liim. But the great mass of New York Ameri- 
cans remembered that in the ^ave States were 
the old friends of the Union and the Constitution, 
their brother Girondists, who were willing to try 
with them to find a deliverance by the middle 
path of conservative action. They hoped to do 
so by the election of Millard Fillmore. And 
here let me for the truth of history say, that the 
great body of New York Americans sustained 
Mr. Fillmore to elect him. If any man in the 
American party employed it to draw off forces 
from the support of Fremont to enure to the 
benefit of Buchanan, he was a betrayer of a noble 
trust for the most unworthy purposes. I 
thought, you thought, we could overthrow the 
Democratic party, and rebuke Pierce and Doug- 
las and all other plotters against their country's 
peace, by preserving our relations with our 
Southern allies. We tried it faithfully, we failed 
signally, and under circumstances much more 
favorable for an election of a middle ground man 
by a middle ground party than the present. 
And if there be a single Repubhcan within the 
sound of my voice, who still doubts the sound- 
ness of Mr. Fillmore on the question of the Re- 
peal and its outgrowths, let me tell him that had 
we succeeded, and not failed with our candidate 
as you failed with yours, border rufiianism, and 
ballot box stuffing, would never have been heard 
of in Kansas, but the whole power of the gov- 
ernment would have been brought to give securi- 
ty and peace to the settlers, and Kansas, long ere 



this, would have taken lier place as a free State 
ill the glorious sisterhood of the Republic. But 
we failed, and you failed, and between our di- 
vided forces the Democrntic party entered upon 
new successes to the perpetration of new out- 
rages, and of bolder attacks upon the Federal 
Constitution. It has taken long strides toward 
the complete revolution of the government on 
the slavery question, it needs but the success of 
the author of all our present evils to consummate 
their purpose. 

We sustained Mr. Fillmore to rebuke and sup- 
press the agitation, by the Democratic party, of 
slavery in Congress. Its agitation by discussion 
among the people upon ethical or economic prin- 
ciples, if it must pass by that name, can never, 
ouglit never to be suppressed. You must crush 
out all thought, all sensibility, all liuman feeling, 
before civilized men will cease to discuss all the 
relations which labor bears to capital in any quar- 
ter of the globe. So long as man is interested in 
his fellow-man, so long he will feel and write, 
and talk upon a question so close to the heart of 
humanity. But when it comes to acts of aggres- 
sive legislation, when the public peace is dis- 
turbed by revolutionary doctrines, engrafted upon 
the compact of the Fathers, or by revolutionar}^ 
overthrow of subsequent compacts of equal moral 
force and obligation ; when the stronger in politi- 
cal power thus seek to defraud the weaker ; 
wliether the aggression come from North or from 
the South, from slave propagandists, or abolition 
propagandists, then is the time for conservative 
men to take the field, and to resist the innovation. 
You and I recognize all the constitutional rights 
of slavery, we take that sacred instrument in its 
letter, we take it as expounded by the framers, 
and the succeeding generation of statesmen, and 
we find that the relation of servile labor is recog- 
nized, and to a certain extent its security guar- 
anteed. We do not stop to ask whether the 
Federal Constitution adapted in 1787, accords 
with all the general doctrines of tlie Magna Charta 
of 1776, we find certain provisions in the bond 
of 1787, and we adhere to them. We will not 
agitate their repeal ; we will frown down and if 
we can, we will vote down every party and every 
man who seeks to disturb the original bond of 
the American Union. 

I repeat, we sustained Mr. Fillmore to rebuke 
and suppress the agitation of slavery by the 
Democratic party in Congress. 

The responsibility of ail our modern agitation 
which has been in the least alarming, lies at the 
door of the Democratic party. Let us consiilt 
history. The North has been anti-slavery in 
general sentimenr, almost from the beginning of 
the government. But the Democratic and Whig 
parties kept up their organizations, and fought 
all their battles over monetary questions and 
questions of National industry and commerce, 
down to 1844. A few abolitionists petitioned 
earlier than that for the abolition of slavery in 
the District of Columbia, and after the settle- 
ment of the right of petition as a principle, they 
were powerless, and the merest fragment of the 
Northern opposition votes. The first great ele- 
ment of agitation, was the annexation of Texas, 
sought by Southern Democratic statesmen to in- 
crease the political power of slavery, and enhance 
the value of that relation of labor. 

The Whig party of the North resisted it to a 
man. Mr. Webster was then at the height of his 
influence and power, and in the Senate and out 



of the Senate hi.<5 mighty utterance was against 
the project, because it increased the number of 
slave States with the original inequalities ceded 
by the Constitution. 

The Southern Whig party also resisted it, as 
a measure of the dominant party, if not because 
in sympathy with their Northern allies. The 
Democracy triumphed. Texas was admitted, 
and " agitation'' was fairly inaugurated ixs one 
of our political divinities. 

The next disturbance of the peace of the 
country was the Mexican war, carried on to se- 
cure new territory for the very same purpose 
that Texas was annexed — territory for more slave 
States. The project succeeded so far as the 
acquisition was concerned, but it did not work to 
the will of the authors. This Northern liive of 
freemen, the restless foot of whose adventure 
scales every height, traverses every desert, cros- 
ses every sea, to test every new source of wealth 
before any other part of tlie world has put on its 
sandels for the journey, had opened the golden 
gate of California, and crowned her with the 
evergreen wreath of freedom before the shackles 
were forged that were to bind her upon the altar 
of slavery. Another Minerva, she sprang full 
armed from the head of northern labor, and 
claimed to add another star to her country's 
ensign. 

You know the subsequent liistory, the Com- 
promise of 1850, which so divided for a time the 
country and parlies. No matter who was right 
or who was wrong in their views of that set- 
tlement, it was made amid a storm of public 
passion which was many months in subsiding. 
Bu<- substantially it did subside. The greatest 
hostility to the measures was found in the Whig 
party north, who felt that California had a right 
to come in on her own merits, and that her ad- 
mission should not form the basis of a compro- 
mise upon a series of questions. Many of you, 
with me, followed Mr. Clay then as we follow 
him novr. I say the storm had substantially 
subsided when, in 1852, the Whig party and that 
portion of it, too, who had most strenuously 
resisted the Compromise measures, nominated 
for its Presidential candidate a supporter of those 
measures, General Scott, and placed him upon a 
platform which expressly declared that those 
compromise measures, " the act known as the 
Fugitive Slave Law included," were received 
and acquiesced in by the Whig party of the 
United States as a '' settlement in principle and 
substance of the dangerous and exciting ques- 
tions which they embrace." It further declared 
that it " deprecated all further agitation of the 
question thus settled." 

General Scott, on this platform, received over 
one hundred and fifty thousand Whig votes in 
New York, while the whole abolition and anti- 
compromise vote was but a little over thirty 
thousand. It was a halcyon time, the winter of 
our discontent was passing away, " and the voice 
of the turtle was heard in the land." General 
Pierce came to the Presidential chair congratu- 
lating the country upon its repose, and referred 
in his Message to those measures as a final settle- 
ment of the slavery question. Pandora's box was 
hermetically sealed. An administration favor- 
able to the measures was triumphantly in the 
ascendant, and it was in the power of the Demo- 
cratic part}' to keep sealed that box, and to secure 
everlasting repose to the country on tlie slavery 
question ; I mean so far as Congressional or State 



4 



legislative action is concerned. I do not believe 
there was a man at the North who hoped to 
create an anti-slavery party strong enough to get 
possL'Ssion of, or any strong influence in the gov- 
ernment, if the Democratic party made no new 
aggressive advance. If there was one such he 
would have been most signally disappointed. 
The occupation of agitators was gone, the conn- 
try panted for repose. It felt its constitutional 
obligations, and was ready to obey them. There 
was no fuel to kindle new fires, and the old ones 
were fast being smothered in their own ashes. 

Tlie opposition to the Democratic party would 
soon have consolidated itself upon some basis, on 
industrial, or monetary oy other questions. It 
was very plain sailing — the trouble was not to 
keep, but to break the peace. Now, gentlemen, 
in tlie winter of 1854 the winds were all loose 
again, the ocean was lashed into fury, and the 
widest spirits were riding, not directing, the 
storm. 

The fatal box had been again opened, and 
Hope herself, this time, escaped. 

Grentlemen, who let loose the winds ? Who 
afresli fanned into flames that reached the heav - 
ens the passions of an infuriated people ? Who 
was this time the arch Agitator ? Whose was 
the sacrilegious hand that hurled into a fairer 
dome than that of Ephesus, the brand wliicli 
kindled into devouring fire the division wall 
between Freedom and Slavery ? Was it Senator 
Seward, or Giddings, or Garrison, or Sumner ? 
It was the man who, in 1544, in a speech made 
at Carrolton, Illinois, is reported to have used 
these words of the noble author of the Missouri 
Compromise : 

" Henry Clay is a black-hearted traitor, and the only 
Americun statesman who ever sold himself for British 
geld." 

I quote from the "Peoria Democratic Union," 
his own organ, as I find it in " The World." 

The man who now with hands dyed with the 
blood of more than five hundred American citi- 
zens who fell in tlie civil war of Kansas, conjur- 
ed by his damnable spells, sues to the friends of 
Henry Clay to lift him out of his political deeps 
and stamp him with the royalty of XDatriotic 
statesmanship. 

The man who after pouring the lowest abuse 
upon the American party, scoffing at it, railing 
at it lika a very drab, now skulks about its car- 
cass, which prays for friendly entombment, and 
begs that witli its poor remains he may patch up 
his ladder to the Presidency. And I am sorry to 
say that the debris of the American party of New 
York is now so poor, is sunk so low from its 
former gloiy, that it has no higher office than 
that. A round in the ladder of Douglas' ambi- 
tion. If he shall attain his purpose, he will 
surely to the ladder turn his back — 

" Scorning the base degrees 

By which he did ascend." 

I question no man's right of independent po- 
litical action ; I exercise it myself ; but I do 
speak of the business of transferring the poor 
remains of the once noble American party to the 
bitterest enemy of all it has ever held sacred. 
As an American, who never asked of the party 
but one favor, that of serving it faithfully, with 
no reward save the consciousness of duty done 
— I wash my hands of it. If I wanted to sup- 
port Mr. Douglas, I would do it, boldly, unapolo- 
getically. Never in masquerade, never in so 



thin a disguise as this which Ottendorfer has 
taught them to loathe. 

We are on the subject of the democracy re- 
sponsible for slavery agitation. I have shown 
you who re-opened the closed controversy. 
Douglas' and Pierce's administration, followed 
by Buchanan's attempt to force Slavery on Kan- 
sas by bayonet and fraudulent ballot — the Dred 
Scott decision, striking down with one fell swoop 
the common law doctrine in relation to slaveiy, 
and the Constitittion, as established and inter- 
preted by the Fathers and their successors, down 
to Pierce's Administration — the still bolder and 
constantly increasing demands for a Slave code, 
for intervention to protect slavery ; — all these 
fresh elements of agitation are the witnesses to 
sustain my charge. 

Now let me call a witness from abroad. In 
1856 the American party North and South at- 
tempted to overthrow the Democratic party, 
because they agitated the slavery question. 

I hold in my hand a copy of a letter of that 
noble old Whig and American, Kenneth Raynor, 
of North Carolina, written in October of 1856, to 
an American meeting in Pennsylvania. He says : 
— " It is the Democratic party leaders and their . 
drill sergeants throughout the Union who are 
the authors of all the evils that now beset the 
country, growing out of the slavery question. 
It is no new thing with that party ; it is an old 
game with them." 

He proceeds to say that they saw the only 
chance of keeping power was to "get up another 
furore aboitt slavery," and they found an oppor- 
tunity in the organization of the territoiial gov- 
ernment in Kansas, and at the wave of the 
wand of the democratic magicians Slavery 
agitation rose in full panoply from the grave. 
" From that day to this," he says, "the country 
has liad no peace ; Slavery agitation rules the 
hour." Four years later I echo him, " From 
that day to this the country has had no peace ; 
slavery agitation rules the hour." 

This is one of hundreds of kindred testimony 
from Americans of the South, that the Demo- 
cratic party is responsible for Slavery agitation. 
I bring another witness and the last one. 

Our leader in 1856, Millard Fillmore, said in 
his letter to the Union meeting last winter, held 
in New York, " that the floods of evil now 
swelling and threatening to overthrow the Con- 
stitution and deluge this land with fraternal 
blood, were traceable" — to Stephen A. Douglas? 
" to this unfortunate act." — [Repeal of the Mis- 
souri Compromise.] 

This was after the John Brown raid, and the 
attempt to fasten the responsibility of that mad 
project on the mere discussions of the institution 
of slavery by Northern Statesmen. 

Let them call further witnesses who want them. 
You know, and I know, that Mr. Douglas called 
into being the Republican party. He exorcised 
a spirit of whose nature he knew little, when 
mad ambition led him to tear down that sacred 
rampart of freedom, while he let slip the dogs 
of war to ravage and desolate the plains of that 
territory. He may degrade the candidacy for the 
Presidency to as low a point as he will, by wan- 
dering over the country showing his wounds, 
and appealing to men whom ho has spent his 
life in villifying. But he will learn from tens of 
thou.sands of such men as Richard W. Thomp- 
son, of Indianua, who participated in the nomi- 
nation of Mr. Bell, and preferred his election to 



that of any of the other candidates, but who is 
disgusted witli the attempt to set Douglas on 
Mr. Bell's shoulders, and now declares, " Mr. 
Bell shall never he elected hy my consent, by a bar- 
gain ivitk 3Ir. Douglas and his friends, or with 
Mr. Breckinridge and his friends^ 'Tis an age of 
short memories, but Mr. Douglas's political past 
is not forgotten, and the great body of Ameri- 
cans will of this give him most emphatic evi- 
dence. 

I tliinkyou now understand what I meant when 
I said that my support of Mr. Lincoln is the logi- 
cal sequence of my support of Mr. Fillmore. I 
was then trying to rebuke and suppress agita- 
tion. The experiment proved that it could not 
be done in connection with our conservative 
Southern allies. The reign of terror which 
crushes out all freedom of political action at the 
South will not now permit of their union with 
the Northern opposition on affirmative grounds. 
We must first beat the Democracy. 

The pressure was so great even in 1856, that 
at least fifty thousand men who should have 
voted for Mr. Fillmore, skulked under the wing 
of the democracy to avoid the stigma of sup- 
porting an Abolitionist. 

The cry of mad dog was raised against Mr. 
Fillmore at the South, and he lost a half-dozen 
Southern States through the sheer cowardice of 
men who should have resisted the senseless howl. 
Themselves at heart opposed to slavery agitation, 
they sought refuge from tlie home storm in the 
camp of the agitators. I saw this timidity on the 
part of our Southern allies, in that campaign, 
and I forewarned them. I addressed a letter in 
the middle of September to an American journal 
in the South, which was widely published in our 
organs Nortli and South, in which I used this 
language : 

'• We of the North, who stand by the consti- 
tutional rights of our southern brethren, but 
without abandoning our own, expect the same 
class of our southern brethren to stand with us 
in this crisis. =^ * * If the South shall con- 
clude that their safety is in the arms of a south- 
ern sectional party, we of the North shall not 
mistake, nor shall we fail to improve the lesson. 
Northern conservatives deprecate sectional par- 
ties, but if such they must have, they will not 
go south of Mason-and-Dixon's line for political 
association. We shall fight on our own ground 
and for our own section. This is the first law of 
nature, and we need no instruction to obey it, 
save the force of example." Now, the great 
mass of conservatives of the South, were true 
in that campaign, but there were enough cowards 
among them to leave Mr. Fillmore high and dry 
on the beach in every Southern State, excepting 
gallant Maryland, demonstrating to my mind, 
that the business of redeeming the country, from 
democratic license, and of suppressing slavery 
agitation, must devolve, for once, on the North- 
ern opposition. So I then said to our southern 
allies — so I now say and act. 

Fiddling for Mr. Douglas, " the author of all 
our evils," as Mr. Fillmore tells us, holding up 
his skirt tails as he perambulates over the coun- 
try in search of his mother, putting our necks 
under his feet that he may have altitude enough 
to reach the Presidency, is not my way of sup- 
pressing agitation or of rebuking agitators. 

While I was thus prepared for a northern alle- 
giance in the campaign of 1860, I never would 
have so allied myself, had the Republican pai-ty 



assumed a revolutionary or aggressive position 
toward the South. Their platform is entirely 
conservative, for it proposes to adhere to the old 
policy and to resist the new. It is substantially 
that of the Binghamton (American) platform. 
Its fourth resolution says, substantially, " You 
fifteen Southern States have your slavery ; it is 
your business not ours. The government owes 
you protection against all invasion from without, 
and your own exclusive control over your insti- 
tutions is just and necessary to maintain this 
Union, and to all your rights the Republican 
party pledges itself." Its other resolutions 
touching slavery, are but a re-affirmation of the 
life-long doctrines of Clay and Webster. 

They have placed in nomination for the Presi- 
dency, a man who, deeply sympathizing with the 
central idea of the Republican party, preserva- 
tion to freedom of territories now free, holds to 
every general conservative principle which we 
advocated in 1856. 

He realizes, as we do, the necessity of a pres- 
ent union of the northern opposition to over- 
throw the reigning dynasty, but except as a ne- 
cessity, this temporary separation of the opposi- 
tion is not to his taste, more than it is ta yours 
or mine. With that ingenuous, transparent 
truthfulness which seeks no concealments, he 
has expressed his views on this subject in his 
published speeches. 

In his speech delivered at Cincinnati, in Sep- 
tember, 1859, he says : 

*' There are plenty of men in tlie Slave States 
that are altogether good enough for me to be 
either President or Vice-President provided they 
will profess their sympathy with our purpose, 
and will place themselves on the ground that our 
men, upon principle can vote for them, I should 
be glad to have some of the many good, and 
able, and noble men of the South, to place them- 
selves where we can confer upon them the high 
honor of an election upon one or the other end 
of the ticket. It would do my soid good to do that 
thing. It would enable us to teach them that, 
inasmuch as we select one of their own number 
to carry out our principles, we are free from the 
charge that we mean more than we say.'''' 

Is that being cabined, cribbed and confined 
within the walls of a bigoted sectionalism ? 

Let me read one further extract from the same 
speech, for it reveals, as in a mirror, the whole 
head and heart of Abraham Lincoln on this ques- 
tion of slavery. He says : 

"I say we must not interfere with the institu- 
tion of slavery in the States where it exists, be- 
cause the Constitution forbids it, and the gene- 
ral welfare does not require us to do so. We 
must not withhold an efficient Fugitive Slave 
Law, because the Constitution requires us, as I 
understand it, not to withhold such a law. But 
we must prevent the outspreading of the insti- 
tution, because neither the Constitution nor gene- 
ral welfare requires us to extend it. We must 
prevent the revival of the African slave trade, 
and the enacting by Congress of a Territorial 
Slave Code." 

Such is Abraham Lincoln. It sounds like a 
passage from Clay or Webster, defining in terms 
so clear, so just, so bold and graphic, the con- 
stitutional rights and duties of the American 
people. 

And yet with the Chicago platform before 
them, with Lincoln's avowed national sentiments 
before them, the charge is made that "aboli- 



6 



tion " is the central purpose the vital energising 
force of the Republican party, and this by men 
who ought o know better. 

Mr. Lincoln, I believe, will be elected Presi- 
dent by the people, and yet if he hud avowed 
himself in favor of aggressive movements against 
slavery in the States, he could not receive a sin- 
gle electoral vote. I go further, and say that if, 
when elected, he should turn his administration 
into one of abolition propagandism, if he should 
falsify the Chicago platform, and seek, not fairly 
to carry out the avowed purposes of the Repub- 
lican party, but to build up a Northern aggres- 
sive, slavery-agitation party, his administration 
would sink even to a lower deep than Mr. Bu- 
chanan's has reached. He would not have a 
score of members of Congress from the whole 
North to sustain him. 

He will receive at least two hundred and fifty 
thousand votes in the State of New York from 
men who would rise in their indignation to over- 
whelm his administration and his treasonable 
advisers. 

The seventy-five thousand supporters of Mr. 
Fillmore in 1856, now supporting Mr. Lincoln in 
New York, would lead the van of that army of 
men who would rise to hurl him from power. 
I know the case is not supposable, for Lincoln 
has the royal impress of an honest man on his 
soul, and tlie union of these States by the main- 
tenance of all the Constitutional rights of all its 
interests and sections, is the master-passion of 
his political nature. Nevertheless, 1 use this 
method of saying what I know — that the Repub- 
lican party could not live an hour, would be as 
poor and contemptible as the Garrison party of 
Abolitionists, if it should come into power with 
a lie in its right hand, on this question of pre- 
serving, in- good faith, the balances of the Con- 
stitution. 

But are there not orators in the Republican 
party who are full of bitterness and denuncia- 
tion of the South, and of their institutions ? 
Certainly there are a few men ; about three or 
four names are generally served up to us by our 
Bell-Union friends, of that stamp. But what has 
that to do with the administration of Mr. Lincoln ? 

They dwell on the liorrible side of slavery, 
until it broods over their souls like a hideous 
nightmare, and they serve up to us a dish of 
atrocities every time they oj)en their lips, I 
confess it is not to my taste, and I know little of 
their speeches, save from report, I have learned 
more of that class of speeches, from that retired 
but cultivated and most excellent gentleman, 
the Hon. Daniel D. Barnard, who seems to have 
a morbid passion for groping about in the charnel 
house, when he could feed on the fair mountains 
and in tiie green valleys where Abram Lincoln 
would lead him, than from all other sources. 
He has made a comprehensive paper of " Elegant 
Extracts," from that class of Philipics. I should 
as soon think of gathering up the mad and trea- 
sonable rhetoric of Keitt and laying it at the door 
of Breckinridge. There are ail sorts of tempe- 
raments in the Republican party. It has been on 
the defensive for six years, resisting aggressions 
every hour. The accomplished Sumner, elected 
by a coalition of Abolitionists and Democrats, to 
the Senate, has deej) private griefs to stimulate 
his natural hate of slavery ; while the earnest 
and eloquent Lovejoy hears the voice of his 
brother crying from the ground, calling upon 
him to avenge his martyrdom. 



There is another class, philosophic thinkers, 
who disuuss this question of labor North and 
South, and its relation to capital, and a few of 
their aphorisms have almost frightened our 
" Union " friends out of their senses. Senator 
Seward at the North, and Senator Hunter at the 
South, are the leading representatives of this 
class. Both scholars, both philosophic, calm, 
earnest thinkers. The one thinks free labor the 
best system in all latitudes ; the other thinks the 
servile relation best, certainly in the planting 
States. The one concurs with Jefl'erson, who 
seems to me to be the political father of Senator 
Seward, for I know oC no man who so completely 
mirrors him in his general views of society, and 
the relations and rights of individual man ; while 
the other thinks Jefferson was in error, and de- 
votes himself to educating over again the South- 
ern mind. Now I need not say in this presence 
that I do not concur in all the abstract notions 
of either of these gentlemen. I have for twenty 
years differed with Mr. Seward in opinion upon 
some questions. I gave him my first vote for 
Governor ; I wrote in his behalf my first news- 
paper article more than twenty years ago ; yet I 
soon discovered that upon some questions we did 
not concur, but they were questions about which 
men ever have differed and ever will differ, and, 
generally of an abstract character. 

But I never saw the day when I did not be- 
lieve that Mr. Seward, if called to the Presidency, 
would administer the government on this very 
question upon a basis which the whole country 
would deem entii-ely just, national, wise and 
patriotic. He may think, as a philosopher, that 
there is an " irrepressible conflict " between the 
two systems of labor, and the Democractic party 
is certainly doing all in its power to justify the 
opinion, and that one or the other must prevail 
universally. But I see no more harm in this 
abstract opinion when uttered by Seward than 
when uttered by Jefferson, with whom he con- 
curs. The question is, what policy would Mr. 
Seward advise as a Republican leader, so far as 
he could influence it — not what abstract opinion 
does he entertain of the future of slavery. I 
do not think there is an intelligent Bell-Everett 
man in the State of New York who believes he 
would advise any aggressive action upon the 
Southern States, or upon their constitutional 
safeguards. Mr. Seward is undoubtedly a bold 
thinker, but his whole life and whole character 
impress upon me the conviction that in action, 
with governmental responsibilities on his should- 
ers, he would be as conservative as justice could 
ask. Radical abstract thought and conservative 
practical action, are by no means incompatible. 

I have said this much of a few of the Repub- 
lican leaders, because of the attempt to use their 
names as nurses do stories of ghosts, to frighten 
children. 

We never hear of Mr, Corwin, or Edward 
Bates, or of any of that school of Republicans, 
from our alarmists. I don't believe we shall 
find them quoting a late article of the Courier 
& Inquirer, Mr. Seward's most intimate, per- 
sonal and devoted organ, in which it declares 
that the negro is better ofl" in present slavery, 
than he would be in a state of freedom, and 
that it is opposed to his emancipation without 
exj^atriation. 

The discussion of issues I shall leave to those 
who follow me. Indeed, you have already 
formed your opinions, or you would not be here 



enrolling yourself under the Lincoln banner. 
You are determined upon resisting in tlie only 
feasible way tlie revolutionary doctrines inaugu- 
rated by Mr. Douglas. You believe the system 
of free labor to be now, and in all future time, 
"best for the white race, best for humanity. You 
will seek to preserve our territories and our pres- 
ent Free States for that system of labor. The 
State of Texas, now enveloped with incendiary 
fires, its citizens butchered by brutal force, and, 
more horrible still, its women violated by savage 
heat, oppressive fear and danger everywhere, the 
legitimate fruits of a system which ignores the 
principle of personal freedom, is an argument 
more persuasive than all the rhetoric in the uni- 
verse, in favor of bestowing upon the labor of 
any State the right of life, liberty and the pur 
suit of happiness. You will not build our future 
empire on the crater of a Vesuvius, when you 
can find the solid rock or the firm earth for a 
foundation. 

I notice your call, among other reasons for your 
action, expresses the impossibility of electing Mr. 
Bell. You honor Mr. Bell as a man and a states- 
man. So do I, and never until now has my politi- 
cal action been severed from his. But, gentle- 
men, he has no distinct party at the North, and 
the only hope of his friends is to defeat an elec- 
tion by the people, and throw the Presidency 
into that boiling cauldron, the House of Repre- 
sentatives. They chaffer and bargain here with 
Douglas, in New Jersey with Breckinridge, any- 
where with anybody, friends or foes, " black 
spirits or while, blue spirits or gray," who will 
give them a coalition. In this state they are 
tickled with ten electors for Mr. Bell, and then 
create twenty-five to let Douglas swallow up the 
ten. No calamity could befall the country equal 
to that which would ensue from throwing the 
election into Congress. 

The genius of jobs would preside, and corrup- 
tion unparalleled, undermining all public confi- 
dence in ofiicial purity, and sending its demoraliz- 
ing influence down through every grade of official 
station, and even into the ranks of the people, 
poisoning all the fountains of our political life, 
would be the most necessary result. It is an 
experiment upon the public morality we cannot 
afford. Let somebody be elected by the College, 
let Lincoln go to the wall if anybody else is 
stronger with the people — only save us the perils 
which thicken around this Congressional experi- 
ment. 

Gentlemen. I end as I began, by saying that 
I want an end to this negro agitation. If the 
democratic party will stop legislating in Con- 
gress and in the Supreme Court about the negro, 
we wiU go to legislating for the white man. 
If they will stop agitating and leave us alone, 
the negro will sink out of sight as a political 



character. We know he is'of an inferior race, 
inferior normally, inferior by force of circum- 
stances which press down upon him heavily at 
the north as well as at the south. He is un- 
der the social mill stone, and so far as his status 
in society is concerned, he is everywhere at the 
bottom, and persistently kept there. If there is 
any creature I pity in the world, it is the negro. 
In his native land he is the victim of civil wars — 
without any opportunity for elevation above the 
lowest grade of barbarism. Stolen from his tro- 
pical home, he is the victim of the heartless cu- 
pidity of the white man — driven into the slave 
shambles, robbed of every blessing of a personal 
freedom — In the slave State he has no home, 
and by law, no wife, no children, no name, no 
life but task work for another. At the north, it 
is a little better, yet he is here by the social law 
driven out of every employ that would give him 
fellowship with white labor. He wliitev^ashea 
walls, and once shaved our faces ; but this is now 
denied him. The white man has turned barber. 
He cannot eat with us, nor worship God with us, 
nor receive his education with us. If he learns 
a mechanic's trade, and enters a shop to sell his 
skill for bread, every white man drops his tool, 
and " you leave, or I must," is the universal cry. 

I am not complaining. I am stating facts — 
exhibiting to you the fruits of a social law which 
at the North has the force of an instinct. Give 
to the negro what you will, so long as he occu- 
pies his present relation to northern society, you 
will give him but a stone for bread and a scor- 
pion for fish. Remove from him this mountain 
of prejudice which all men feel, the most hu- 
mane as well as the most unfeeling, a prejudice 
which places the negro beyond the possibility 
of social or citizen elevation, and you will do 
him a service — a service which, until your in- 
stincts are changed, will never be done him. 
In the midst of the white race he is an inferior 
in every relation, bond or free, the slave of caste 
if not of law. Yet this is no reason why we 
should enslave him, no reason why we should 
demoralize oxxv own posterity by establishing the 
institution of slavery over our western domain. 
It is a reason why we should treat with charity 
and tenderness these children of our Common 
Father — why, in every way which Christian 
philanthropy dictates and the law of our nature 
admits, we should seek his moral and social 
elevat'-on. 

It is the office of a powerful Christian State 

To civilize the rude, unpolished \^orld 
And lay it under the restraint of laws. 
To make man mild and sociable to man, 
To cuUivate the wiid, licentious savage 
With wisdom, discipline and 1 beral arts. 
The embellishments of life. Virtues like these 
jVTake human nature shine, reform the soul 
And break our fierce barbarians into meu. , 



EVENING JOTJKNAL TRACTS.-No. 14- 



SPEECH 



CARL SCHURZ, 



.A.T aooi'Eit insrSTITTJTE, 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER IS, 1860. 



Douglasism Exposed and Eepublicanism Vindicated. 



Fellow-Citizens: This meeting is called to 
ratify the nominations of your State Convention. 
I am a stranger among you, and have no imme- 
diate interest in the affairs of your State; but 
nevertheless I can tell you that the citizens of 
my State ratify your nominations as heartily as 
you do. [Cheers.] In the nomination of Morgan 
and Campbell they see the guaranty of a glorious 
victory in November. [Applause.] You do not 
expect me to speak about State affairs. I will, 
therefore, at once turn your attention to national 
topics. [Cheers.] I may draw heavily upon your 
patience. I hope you will bear with me. [Cheers.] 
A Voice — We'll stand it three hours. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

In a contest of great principles, like that which 
is now agitating the country, I am little inclined 
to discuss the personal qualities of candidates ; 
but, when the individual merits of a man are set 
up as his principal claim to the highest and most 
responsible office in the Republic, it is natural 
that we should feel obliged to examine his history 
and character with more than ordinary care. 

It is a notorious fact that the friends of Judge 
Douglas in the Northern States solicit the vote 
of the people on the ground that he has done 
more for the freedom of the Territories, and that 
he is a truer champion of free labor, and besides, 
a greater statesman, than any living individual. 
Thus a personal issue is urged upon us, and we 
are ready to accept it. This will be the subject 
of my remarks to-night. I shall not transgress 
the limits of propriety, but I am determined to 
call things by their right names. 

What is it that entitles Judge Douglas to the 
high-sounding appellation, "the Champion of 
Freedom," or " the greatest of living statesmen'?" 
Is it his past career, or is it his present position 1 
You can survey the history of this " Champion 



of Freedom " at a single glance. The Judge has 
his Free-Soil record — what Northern Pro-Slavery 
man has not ? But there is hardly a prominent 
man in political life who has taken more pains 
than he to disclaim and apologize for his early 
Anti-Slavery sentiments. So we may droj) this 
subject. What folloAvs is more instructive. 

In 1820, the Missouri Compromise was framed 
as a sacred compact between the two sections of 
the Union. By virtue of that Compromise, Mis- 
souri was admitted as a Slave State, and Arkan- 
sas as a Slave State ; and thus the free North, as 
one party to the contract, paid down its price for 
the Slavery prohibition north of 36° 30'. Was 
Mr. Douglas ever heard to express any doubt as 
to the constitutionality of the Missouri Compro- 
mise so long as it served to augment the number 
of Slave States 1 It was to him, as to all others, 
" a sacred and inviolable compact" — ^^as sacred 
and inviolable as the Constitution itself; and he 
cursed the " ruthless hand" that would dare to 
break it down. When, after the Mexican war, 
the Territories acquired for this Union were to 
be organized, he was among the first and fore- 
most who advocated the extension of the Mis- 
souri line across the whole continent. What 
would have been the result of that measure ? In 
the Territories acquired from Mexico Slavery 
was abolished and prohibited by local legisla- 
tion, but the extension of the Missouri line was 
calculated to admit Slavery into all that part of 
it which lies south of ZQP 30'. Mark well : So 
long as the Missouri Compromise served to intro- 
duqe Slave States, he did not dream of its un- 
constitutionality. When by the extension of the 
Missouri line free territory could be converted 
into slave territory, he found it so eminently con- 
venient, so excellent an arrangement, that he not 
only proposed to preserve it in its original ex- 



^^FoR Sale at the Office op the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Sinolk Oopt, 2c. ^ 
PER Dozen Copies, 20c. ; per^^Hundred, |1 ; per Thousand, $& 



tent, but to run It across the -whole continent to 
the shores of the Pacific Ocean. 

But now the time arrives when Free States are 
to grow up under the guaranties of the same 
Missouri Compromise. A new light dawns upon 
Judge Douglas. He rises in the Senate Cham- 
ber, and asserts that the Territory north of the 
Missouri line can no longer be exempted from 
Slavery, because the exclusion of Slavery from 
it — the very condition on which Missouri Avas 
admitted as a Slave State — was at war with the 
fundamental principles of the Constitution. The 
same man who had cursed as ruthless, the hand 
that would viola.te the Missouri Compromise, as 
long as that compact was beneficial to Slavery, 
tore it down with his own hands as soon as it 
was to serve the interests of Free Labor. And he 
is the truest " Champion of Freedom I"' How 
wonderfal a change ! At the time when he pro- 
posed the extension of the Missouri line to the 
Pacific Ocean, he was cither convinced of the un- 
constitutionality of that compromise, or he Avas 
not. If he was, how could he conscientiously 
propose the extension and ])eri)etuation of a 
measure which he considered a crime against 
the Constitution 1 Were his conscience and his 
convictions hushed into silence by the interests 
of Slavery ? Or if he was not, how did it come 
to pass that he became so suddenly convinced <>f 
that unconstitutionality the very moment that 
the preservation and execution of that Compro- 
mise would have advanced the interests of free 
labor ? How did it happen that his convictions, 
in all their prompt and wonderful transfoima- 
tions, always coincided so admirably with the 
interests of Slavery 1 This is indeed a most as- 
tonishing coincidence, and I leave it to your 
sagacity to draw your conclusions. 

But Mr. Douglas is still the "True Champion 
of Free Labor; " for it is asserted that the Ne- 
braska bill — the same measure which breaks 
down the barriers to Slavery — will by that very 
operation introduce Free Labor into the Territo- 
ries, The thing is speedily brought to a practi- 
cal test, No sooner is the Nebraska bill enacted 
and the Missouri restriction struck down, than 
Emigrant Aid Societies are organized in the 
Slave States, especially in Missouri, for the pur- 
pose of introducing Slavery into Kansas. The his- 
tory of the Blue Lodges is familiar to you. Law- 
less bands of armed invaders pour into Kansas, 
take possession of the ballot-boxes, bowie-knife 
and revolver in hand, and control the elections by 
fraud and violence. Did Mr. Douglas ever utter 
a word of reproach or condemnation against the 
Border Ruffians of Missouri '? Did he not most 
tenderly excuse their atrocities on the plea of self- 
defense, while it was a notorious fact that their 
organization had preceded that of the Free-State 
men '? And^ mark well, that immigration was 
Pro- Slavery. 

Other Emigrant Aid Societies are organized in 
the Northern States. Large numbers of men go 
to Kansas, armed, indeed, for self-defense, as 
every pioneer will be, but with the bona fide 
intention of settling down upon the soil of that 
territory as permanent inhabitants ; and while 
burning houses and trails of blood mark the tiaek 
of the Border Ruffians, flourishing farms and 
industrious towns spring up under the hands of 
the Free-State men. Do you remember how 
often Judge Douglas emptied the vials of his 
wrath, and cast denunciations upon the heads of 



Free Labor immigratiba 1 And, mark well, that 
immigration was Ami Slavery, 

A Legislature is set up by a band of lawless 
invaders — mostly Mis;;ourians — set up by the 
most atrocious violations of the ballot-box, set 
up in defiance of all the rules of constitutional 
government ; that Legislature adopts the slave- 
code of Missouri as the laws of Kansas, and adds 
to them laws so outrageous in their nature that 
even Northern Democrats quailed under the op- 
probrium. Do you remember that Judge Doug- 
las recognized that Legislature, although its cri- 
minal origin was manifest to all, as the highest 
law-giving authority t)f the Territory, and the 
laws enacted by them, although known to be the 
offspring of fraud and violence, as the valid laws 
of Kansas '? Do you remember how he denoun- 
ced every one who would not submit as a rebel 
and a traitor 1 And, mark well, that Legislature 
and those laws were Pro-Slavery. The Free 
State settlers of Kansas, then evidently a large 
majority of the population, go to work and frame 
a Constitution. That Constitution was gotten up 
in a way hardly more irregular than the Consti- 
tutions of many States. It was submitted to a 
vote of the people, and adopted by a large majo- 
rity. So it Mas presented to Congress. Do you 
remember that Judge Douglas found no term of 
denunciation too vile to use it against that Con- 
stitution, and that he stigmatized those who had 
framed it as traitors who must be struck down 1 
And, mark well, that Constitution, the choice of 
the people of Kansas, was Anti-Slavery. 

What a series of wonderful coincidences ! So 
far, whatever was calculated to benefit Slavery 
in Kansas, Judge Douglas was sure to approve; 
whatever was calculated to serve the cause of 
Free Labor, Judge Douglas was sure to denounce. 
But I must not forget that he brought forward 
other reasons for his acts than the interest of 
Slavery. Ah, indeed ! Is it so extraordinary 
that a man of abilit)", who stoops to do a mean 
act, should have wit enough to disguise it 1 
Compare his plausibilities with these coinciden- 
ces, and you will with me come to the conclusion 
that this " Champion of Free Labor," if he really 
was an enemy to Slavery, loved his enemies much 
better than a good Chiistian ought to do. 

But we will be just to him. Now we arrive 
at a period in his history in which he seems to 
have acquired some title to the esteem of his 
countrymen. We are so little accustomed to see 
that kind of statesmen do a fair thing, that our 
surprise is apt to stimulate our gratitude. I al- 
lude to the position assumed by Judge Douglas 
in the struggle about the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion. A packed Convention has framed a Con- 
stitution, fastening Slavery upon Kansas, and 
refuses to submit it to a vote of the people. The 
President, in a message, urges the admission of 
Kansas as a State, under that Constitution as it 
stands.. Judge Douglas, together with the Re- 
publicans, resists the measure ; not, indeed, be- 
cause he is opposed to Slavery — for he solemnly 
! and emphatically protests that he " does notcai-e 
whether Slavery be voted up or voted down ;" 
i Init because it is uncertain whether the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution embodies the will of the peoj)le. 
The slave power is arrayed against him, and foi 
the first time in his life the claim of his being a 
"Champion of Freedom " seems to rise from the 
level of a ridiculous absurdity. I should feel 
little tempted to detract from the credit he gained 



by his attitude on that occasion, if the facts 
which preceded and followed it were not of so un- 
mistakable a nature as to open our eyes to the pe- 
culiar concatenation of circumstances which made 
it almost impossible for him to act otherwise. 

And here again we notice a series of most strik- 
ing coincidences. It so happened that just about 
the time when the Lecompton question was be- 
fore Congress, Douglas's term as a United States 
Senator was about to expire. He knew well that 
his popularity at home rested upon the popular 
belief that he really did work for the cause of 
Free Labor. How stupid must the man have been 
not to see that, saddled with the Lecompton Con- 
stitution, it would have been impossible for him 
to keep up that delusion. So he assumed the 
mask of an advocate of popular rights, coquetted 
with the Republicans in order to disarm their 
opposition, and went before the people of Illinois 
as a candidate for re-election to the Senate. What 
right have I to speak of his assuming a mask 2 
I have that right, if I can show that he threw it 
off as soon as his object was gained. 

Review his acts in connection with the Kansas 
struggle. Slavery and Free Labor had for years 
waged their fierce war about that unfortunate 
Territory with doubtful success. Now at last no 
sane man could any longer close his eyes against 
the fact, that when the Lecompton outrage was 
perpetrated, the Free State men outnumbered 
their opponents almost ten to one. Their victory 
might be delayed, but was no longer doubtful. 
How had Douglas acted so long as Slavery had 
a chance to gain the preponderance 1 Need I 
remind you of the unwavering solicitude with 
which he defended the Border Ruffians ; of the 
fierceness with which he denounced the Free 
State immigration; of the virulence with Avhich 
he upheld the Border Ruffian code of laws ; of 
the promptness with which he put his foot upon 
the law of the people expressed in the Free State 
Constitution; of his brutal, cynic sneer at the 
agonies of a people in distress 1 Was the elec- 
tion of the Border Ruffian Legislature, the enact- 
ment of the Border Ruffian code of laws, a less 
flagrant violation of popular rights than the Le- 
compton Constitution 1 How could he uphold 
the former, and claim any credit for opposing the 
latter 1 Here is another most wonderful coinci- 
dence. Just so long as Slavery had a chance in 
Kansas, Douglas stood upon the side of Slavery. 
But no sooner was the victory of Freedom sure, 
than Douglas was sure to stand upon the strong- 
est side. 

And now he is held up to our admiration as 
the " True Champion of Freedom." After having 
done more than any other man in perpetrating 
the outrage, what merit is there in helping to 
prevent its final consummation, when it has be- 
come manifest that, in spite of him, that con- 
summation has become impossible 1 Look at it. 
The Nebraska bill, as 1 heard my friend Grim- 
shaw in Illinois illustrate it, had set fire to the 
edifice of Territorial Liberty, The Republican 
fire companies are vigorously at work ; the Repub- 
lican engines are playing with full force, and then 
comes the very incendiary, Douglas, with a little 
tea-spoonful of Anti-Lecompton water, throws it 
into the flames, and then swells himself up and 
claims to have extinguished the conflagration— 
and so he goes before the people of Illinois as 
the " True Champion of Freedom." 

And this he would hardly have had the cour- 
age to do, had not, as is now known to all of us, 



the indignant threats of the gallant Broderick 
overawed him when he was about to compromise 
with Buchanan. 

I repeat, I would never stoop to question the 
motives which actuated him in the Lecompton 
struggle, had not the acts which preceded ifc 
made his honesty doubtful; and had not those 
that followed it precluded all belief in the sin- 
cerity of his repentance. If he was honest, you 
will be obliged to confess, it is exceedingly hard 
to prove it on him. 

On the strength of this exploit he succeeded 
in carrying his point in Illinois ; not indeed by a 
popular majority, for that was against him, but 
by an old Gerrymandering apportionment. It was 
one of those lugubrious victories, which consist 
in a narrow escape from total annihilation. But 
his seat is regained ; and now he throws a wist- 
ful eye upon a higher seat ; and remembers at 
once that the Democratic road to the White 
House leads through the slaveholding States. So 
he turns his face Southward without delay, and 
sets out on a trip down the Mississippi. He is 
at once betrayed into making a few remarks, 
here and there, to spontaneous gatherings. Sud- 
denly we find the man who had tried to delude 
the people of Illinois into the belief that under 
the Kansas and Nebraska bill, the people had a 
right to exclude slavery, in the South busily apo- 
logising for it ; and now behold the old Douglas 
again wielding the weapon of sophistry with un- 
blushing boldness, and endeavoring to make his 
doctrine of Popular Sovereignti- palatable to the 
Southern stomach. 

The development of the Popular Sovereignty 
doctrine is one of the most instructive chapters 
in the history of our days. It shows how easily 
the popular mind can be obfuscated by a so- 
phi.'itical plausibility, and how easily correct 
principles are lost sight of in the confused strug- 
gle of interests and aspirations. Future genera- 
tions will scrutinize, with curious astonishment 
the history of our days, and wonder at the tem- 
porary success of so transparent a fraud. Per- 
mit me a brief digression. 

Popular Sovereignty, in the true sense of the 
term, means the sovereignty of all individuals, 
so regulated by law as to protect the rights and 
liberties of any one against the encroachments 
of any other, and so organized by political in- 
stitutions as to give a common expression to the 
collective will. Its natural basis is the equality 
of the rights of all men. Its natural end is the 
protection of all individuals in the exercise of 
their rights and in the enjoyment of their liber- 
ties. Hence it precludes the idea of Slavery 
in all its forms. Apply this true Popular 
Sovereignty to the Territories, and we are will- 
ing to accept it — nay, it is the very thing which 
we are contending for. But is this what Doug- 
las, in the Nebraska bill, contemplated ? By no 
means. His Popular Sovereignty is based upon 
the assumption that one class of men has the 
power — has the right — to strip another class of 
their natural rights, and to hold them as slaves. 
For argument sake, let us follow him in his 
course of reasoning, and suppose the white pop- 
ulation of the Territories had the right to hold a 
portion of the inhabitants as property. So, we 
have to lower the standard of Popular Sove- 
reignty ono degree ! Listen to the language of 
the Kansas and Nebraska bill : 

" It is the true intent and meaning of this act not to 
legislate Slavery into any Stat© or Territory, nor to exclud* 



it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free 
to form and regulate their institutions in their own way, 
subject only to the Constitution of the United States." 

At first, one would suppose this bill gave the 
people of the Territories the sovereign right to 
introduce Slavery, provided, always, that Sla- 
very could not go there unless introduced by a 
positive act of Territorial legislation. Is that 
what Douglas's principle of Popular Sovereignty 
contemplated ? By no means ! For, according 
to him, a slaveholder may introduce his slave 
property, and thereby introduce and establish 
Slavery in a Territory without that positive act 
of Territorial legislation. 

We have, therefore, to lower the standard of 
Popular Sovereignty another degi-ee ! One would 
suppose that, Slavery so being admitted at first, 
the people of the Territory would have at least 
the sovereign right to remove and exclude it by 
a positive act of Territorial legislation. Is that 
"what Judge Douglas's principle of Popular 
Sovereignty contemplated ? By no means ! He 
told you at first that this was a question to be 
decided by the Supreme Court, then he told you 
that the sovereignty of a Territory remains in 
abeyance, suspended in the United States ; in 
trust for the people until they shall be admitted 
into the Union as a State ; and, at last, after the 
Illinois campaign, he dropped the expression, 
*' excluding Slavery," altogether. It is signifi- 
cant that the attempts of the people of Nebraska 
and Kansas to exclude Slavery by law, were 
promptly put down by the vetoes of the Gov- 
ernors of those Territories ; vetoes exercised by 
virtue of the power conferred on the Territorial 
Governments by Douglas's own Nebraska bill. 

Thus we have descended two great steps from 
the true idea of Popular Sovereignty, without 
having reached Judge Douglas's great principle ; 
and you will perceive that the true Popular Sove- 
reignty has already disappeared long ago. But 
let us lower the standard of Popular Sovereignty 
still another degree, and we may hope that the 
deeper we sink the closer we may approach Judge 
Douglas's position. At last we find him not 
with a principle but with an assumption. It 
matters not, said he in his B'reeport speech in 
August, 1858 : 

" It matters not what way the Supreme Court may here- 
after decide as to the abstract question, whether Slavery may 
go or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution, 
the people have the lawful means to introduce it, or ex- 
clude it, as they please ; for the reason that Slavery cannot 
exist a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by 
local police regulations. Those police regulations can 
only be established by the local legislature, and if the peo- 
ple are opposed to Slavery they will elect representatives 
to that body who will, by unfriendly legislation, prevent 
the introduction of it into their midst." 

This then is the great principle of Popular 
Sovereignty. It contemplates, not the general 
exercise and enjoyment of equal rights ; not that 
Slavery cannot go into a Territory unless the 
people introduce it by law ; not that the people 
have the sovereign right to exclude it by a direct 
act of Territorial legislation; but that they may 
annoy and embarrass the slaveholder in the enjoy- 
ment of his slave property, so as to tease Slavery 
out of the Territory if they can. If, ten years ago, 
.a man had undertaken to call this Popular Sov- 
'Creignty, the people would have suspected him 
-of serious mental derangement. Is not really 
this kind of Popular Sovereignty, according to 
Mr. Lincoln's striking illustration, " as thin as the 
"homoeopathic soup that was made by boiling 
" the shadow of a pigeon that had been starved 
♦'to death 1" It would seem impossible to make 



it any thinner, and yet Mr. Douglas undertakes 
this incredible task. After having tried to de- 
lude the voters of Illinois into the belief that 
consistently with his position, the people of the 
Territory may, in some round-about way, remove 
Slavery, this " True Champion of Freedom " goes 
South and proves there that Slavery has a legal 
existence in the Territories. We find him at 
New Orleans, and the same man who at Freeport 
had told the people of Illinois that it mattered not 
what the Supreme Court might decide, as to the 
abstract question, whether Slavery may or may 
not go into a Ten-itory — the same man speaks to 
the people of Louisiana as follows : 

" I, in common with the Democracy of Illinois, accept 
the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in 
the case of Dred Scott, as an authoritative interpretation of 
the Constitution. In accordance with that decision, wo 
hold that slaves are property : and hence on an equal footing 
with other property, and the owner of the slave has the same 
right to move ii to a Territory, and carry his slave property 
with him, as the owner of any other property has to go 
there and carry his property." 

If there could be any misunderstanding as to 
the meaning of this sentence, he has removed 
the possibility of it by an expression he used in 
debate in the Senate on the 23d of February, 
1859: 

" Slaves, according to the Dred Scott decision, being 
property, stand on an equal footing with all other kinds of 
•property ; and there is just as much obligation on the part 
of the Territorial Legislature to protect slaves, as every 
other species of property, as there is to protect horses, 
cattle, dry goods and liquors." 

And mark well, Judge Douglass never for<iets 
the liquors! There is Douglas, the candidate 
for the Senatorship of Illinois, who does not caie 
what way the Supreme Court may decide ; and 
here is Douglas, the candidate for the Presidency, 
who declares the decision of the Supreme Court 
to be the authoritative interpretation of the Con- 
stitution. 

What then did the Supreme Court in the Dred 
Scott case decide 1 Let me quote from Howard's 
official report some of the points laid down in 
that case : 

"Every citizen has a right to take with him into the Ter- 
ritory any article of property which the Constitution of the 
United States recognizes as property." 

" The Constitution of the United States recognizes slaves 
as property, and pledges the Federal Government to de- 
fend it." 

"That act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a citizen 
of the United States" taking with him his slaves when he 
removes into the Territory in question to reside, is an act 
of authority over the private property which is thus war- 
ranted by the Constitution." 

"While it remains a Territory Congress may legislate 
over it within the scope of its constitutional powers in 
relation to citizens of the United States, and may establish 
a Territorial Government, and the form of the local govern- 
ment must be regulated by the direction of Congress, but 
with powers not exceeding those which Congress itself, by 
the Constitution, is .luthorized to exercise over the citizens 
of the United States in respect to the rights of property." 

If this needs any illustration, I may furnish it 
by quoting a few more sentences from the deci- 
sion : 

"No word can be found in the Constitution which gives 
Congress power over slave property, or entitles properly 
of that kind to less protection than property of any other 
tlescription ; only the power conferred is the poicer coupled 
with the duty of guarding and protecting the owner in his 
rights:^ 

This, then, is what Douglas calls the authori- 
tative interpretation of the Constitution, and he 
well understands what it means; for did he not 
saiy that there is just as much obligation on the 
part of the Territorial Legislature to protect pro- 
perty in slaves as there is to protect any other 
species of property 1 Well, but_^what becomes 
of his great principle of Popular Sovereignty 1 



5 



What becomes even of that homoeopathic dilution 
called unfriendly legislation 1 Congress can, ac- 
cording to the Dred Scott decision, which Doug- 
las acknowledges to be " the authoritative inter- 
pretation of the Constitution," confer no power 
which Itself does not possess. The onlj^ power 
it possesses in regard to slave property is the 
power of guarding and protecting the owner in 
his rights, and that power is coupled with the 
duty to do so. Hence the only power Congress 
can confer upon the Territorial Government, in 
relation to slave property, is the power coupled 
with the duty of guarding and protecting the 
owner in his rights. 

Thus we are obliged to lower the standard of 
Popular Sovereignty still another degree, in or- 
der to reach Douglas's great principle. It does 
not even consist in the right of the people to 
tease Slavery out of a Territory ; it consists in 
the power of a Territorial Legislature, coupled 
with the duty, to pass acts for the protection of 
Slavery, but by no means against it. The as- 
sumed power to pass unfriendly laws seems to be 
changed into the duty to pass friendly laws. I 
call this Popular Sovereignty with a vengeance ! 
It is like mock turtle soup — there is soup enough, 
but not a particle of turtle. 

It is true, Judge Douglas was in the habit of 
quibbling a little about the meaning of the Dred 
Scott decision ; and the Wickliffe resolution adopt- 
ed by his friends at Baltimore has helped him 
over his difficulties. It is to the following effect : 

" Resolved, That it is in accordance with the true inter- 
pretation of the Cincinnati platform, that, during the ex- 
istence of a Territorial Government, the measure of re- 
striction, whatever it may be, imposed by the Federal 
Constitution on the powers of the Territorial Legislatures, 
over the subject of domestic relations, as the same has been 
or may hereafter be finally determined by the Supreme 
Court of the United States, shall be respected by good 
citizens and enforced with promptness and fidelity by eve- 
ry branch of the Federal GovernmenL" 

To all of which Judge Douglas, in his letter 
of acceptance, most graciously assents. 

We hear no longer of the " rights of the people 
" of the Territories to form and regulate their 
*' domestic institutions in their own way," but 
now, " of the measure of restrictions imposed 
" upon the Territorial Legislatures over the sub- 
** ject of domestic relations." The change is very 
significant ; whatever these restrictions, they are, 
or may hereafter be, finally determined by the 
Supreme Court of the United States. Let me 
remind you that previous to the election of Mr. 
Buchanan, whenever the question was put as to 
the right of property in slaves under the new 
Territorial Government, Judge Douglas's regular 
reply was " that is a question for Congress to 
*' decide." That answer was the forerunner of 
the Dred Scott decision. We are now told " as 
*•' shall hereafter be finally determined by the Su- 
" preme Court of the United States." What will 
follow *? The restriction, already finally deter- 
mined, we know ; it is, that Government cannot 
impair the right of property, in slaves ; but has 
the power, coupled with the duty, to protect and 
guard the owner in his rights. " Restrictions 
which may hereafter be "finally determined!" 
Heaven knows what they will be. But, '•' what- 
"ever they may be " Douglas is pledged to en- 
force them *' with promptness and fidelity." 

So it turns out that his Popular Sovereignty 
fastens Slavery more irremovable upon a Terri- 
tory as such, than it is fastened upon South 
Carolina herself. The people of South Carolina 
in their sovereign capacity mav abolish Slavery 



whenever they see fit. The people of Kansas in 
their Territorial condition cannot. The people 
of South Carolina have the right to discourage 
Slavery by unfriendly legislation ; the people of 
Kansas are bound to guard and protect the slave- 
owner in his rights, and are restricted from pass- 
ing laws violating that obligation. The Federal 
Government has no power to interfere in South 
Carolina, but as soon as Kansas dares to disregard 
the " restriction," Judge Douglas, if he should 
become President of the United States, would 
stand pledged to enforce that restriction " with 
" promptness and fidelity." And after having 
struck down the freedom of the Territories, this 
" Champion of Freedom" will sneak behind the 
judicial despotism of the Supreme Court, and 
like the murderer of Banquo, tell you that " Thou 
canst not say I did it !" 

But I say he did do it. The character of his 
doctrine of Popular Sovereignty was determined 
by the decision of the question, whether or not 
slave property, as such, could be introduced into 
a Territory before Slavery was established there 
by a positive act of Territorial legislation. If 
this question was decided in the affirmative tho 
doctrine that Slavery, as the creature of local 
law, was totally abandoned. If Slavery could 
exist in a Territory without being estabhshed by 
local law, then it existed there by a law higher 
than local law, and that could be no other than 
the Constitution of the United States. In this 
case every sane man must see that then Slavery 
cannot be removed from a Territory by a mere 
act of the Territorial legislature, whether direct 
or indirect ; and Mr. Douglas need not affect any 
surprise at the doctrines his Southern opponents 
hold. They are the natural, the legitimate, the 
logical offspring of his own position. When he 
conceded that all-important point — and he did 
concede it — this " Champion of Freedom" was 
either aware of the consequence, or he was not 
If he was not, he is liable to the charge of gross 
stupidity ; if he was, he is liable to the charge of 
deliberate betrayal of the cause of Free Labor, 
covered with the grossest hypocrisy. In what 
character do you like your " Champion of Free- 
dom" best ? As one who has not sagacity enough 
to defend it, or as one who deliberately betrays 
it ? There are cases where stupidity is no less 
criminal than hypocrisy. 

This, then, is the " great principle of Popular 
Sovereignty." This is "leaving the people to 
'• form and regulate their own domestic institu- 
" tions in their own way." I am warranted in 
saying that, if ever a gigantic, unscrupulous, 
shameless fraud was attempted upon a free peo- 
ple — if history ever furnished an example of 
unblushing, scandalous, revolting hypocrisy, it 
is this "True Champion of Freedom ;" to fasten 
Slavery irremovably upon the Territories, and 
calling it " leaving the people perfectly free to 
" regulate their own domestic institutions !" — to 
•strip the people of every right to regulate their 
own affairs, and to call it Popular Sovereignty ! 
Strike the word " demagoguism" out of your 
dictionaries if you do not want to apply it here. 
But, although we may understand how inordi- 
nate, desperate ambition should resort to such, 
frauds, it remains truly wonderful that so many 
thousands have suffered themselves to be deceiv- 
ed by them. 

Is it surprising that the " Champion of Free- 
dom " who defends such theories should be fouud 
a little unreliable in practice ? How clamorous 



6 



he was against the Lecompton Constitution ! 
What a terrible idea, that a Territory should he 
forced into the Union as a State with a Constitu- 
tion not approved by the people ! At last the 
people of Kansas frame a new Constitution ; it is 
submitted to the people; it is approved by a 
large majority. All conditions of admission ri- 
gorously complied with, they knock at the Union, 
and we expect to see our " True Champion of 
Freedom " rush to the rescue with unabated zeal 
— for his great point is gained. But where is 
Douglas 1 The House of Representatives votes 
in favor of the admission ; the decision of the 
question depends upon the action of the Senate. 
The matter is referred to the Committee on 
Territories. That Committee consists of seven 
members. Douglas is one of them ; but he does 
not attend their meetings. The vote of the Com- 
mittee stands 3 to 3. Douglas's vote can decide 
the question in the Committee, in favor of the 
admission of Kansas, It is well known how far 
the action of a Committee goes to determine the 
action of the Senate ; but Douglas does not vote ! 
The question remains in this suspended state for 
some time. The country looks for the action of 
the Committee; the action of the Committee is 
blocked by a tie ; but Douglas does not vote ! 
Douglas who had declared so fiercely against 
the admission under a Constitution which the 
people did not want, does not vote when the ad- 
mission is applied for with a Constitution which 
the people do want. Douglas, the " True Cham- 
pion of Freedom," holding the fate of Free Kan- 
sas in that Committee in his hands, Douglas does 
not vote ! How is this 1 When he opposed the 
Lecompton Constitution he was a candidate for 
reelection to the Senate. But things have chang- 
ed since. Douglas now acts as a candidate for 
the Presidency. The same man who in 1857 had 
to propitiate the Free people of Illinois, has now 
to propitiate the people of the South ; and instead 
of deciding the report of the Committee in favor 
of the admission of Kansas as a Free State, he 
is busily engaged in preparing his loth of May 
speech, which is to convince the slaveholders 
that his great principle of Popular Sovereignty 
is w^orking favorably for the introduction of Slave 
States — the Free State of Kansas is kept out of 
the Union once more and he is held up as the 
" True Champion of Freedom." Poor Freedom 
— then the Champion's belt lies like a halter 
around her neck. 

Here I will stop. I might go on for hours, 
piling fact upon fact, conclusion upon conclusion, 
argument upon argument, until the putrid accn- 
mulation of fraud and hypocrisy, exposed to the 
sunlight, would torture your very nostrils. It is 
enough. I will dismiss Mr. Douglas, ''the True 
Champion of Freedom," and devote a few remarks 
to Mr. Douglas, '"'the greatest of livingstatesmen." 

True statesmanship can rest upon no other ba- 
sis but an intimate familiarity with the philoso- 
phy of Grovernment, and a thorough kuowiedge 
of the sources and effects of political institutions. 
It can have no other aim and end but the con- 
servation of sound constitutional principles and 
their application most favorable to the develop- 
ment of popular liberty. Let us see how *^ the 
greatest of living statesmen" stands the test. I 
shdiW confine myself to a few facts of vital im- 
portance. 

It is one of the striking peculiarities of our 
Federal polity that the different branches of our 
Qeneral Government enjoy a certain independence 



in the exercise of the functions respectively as- 
signed to them. In order to guard against the 
danger and abuses which might arise from that 
independence, the power necessary for the exer- 
cise of those functions had to be carefully limi- 
ted and strictly defined. Thus a system of checks 
and balances was established in our Constitution, 
which is calculated to render usurpation impos- 
sible. It is, indeed, said that the Executive 
branch of our Government is responsible to the 
people, but that responsibility consists only in its 
being liable to impeachment. For the Secreta- 
ries of the President do not, like the Ministers 
of the Crown of England, sit upon the benches 
of the Legislature, subject to the immediate con- 
trol of the parliamentary majority. Our Execu- 
tive, unlike that of every constitutional govern- 
ment, is stable for a term of four years, remova- 
ble only on the conviction of treason, bribery, 
and other high crimes and misdemeanors. But 
already Jefferson told you that impeachment is a 
mere scare-crow. So the Executive moves inde- 
pendently within the circle of its own powers. 
It is, therefore, of vital importance that this cir- 
cle should be strictly drawn, and those powers 
of the Legislature which form a necessary sup- 
plement to the powers of the Executive be jeal- 
ously preserved. 

If this system of checks and balances is of a 
general necessity, it is doubly indispensable in all 
matters relating to the administration of our 
foreign policy. It is natural and proper that in 
all diplomatic transactions with foreign govern- 
ments, our Executive should be intrusted with a 
certain discretion. But the Cabinet of the Pre- 
sident, not being subject to our Legislature in 
the same manner as the British Ministry is to 
Parliament, it is essential that in the absence of 
immediate control, another system of checks 
should be placed around the Executive power. 
This was done in the Constitution by making, 
not, indeed, the diplomatic transactions them- 
selves, but their ends and results, immediately 
dependent upon the direct action of Congress. 
Thus, no treaty can be made and consummated 
without the approval of the Senate by a two- 
thirds vote. And Congress alone shall have 
power to declare war. Why was the war-making 
power not intrusted to the Executive 1 It is 
hardly necessary to describe to you the part 
which wars have played in the history of the 
world — the blood of millions spilled, not seldom, 
for paltry causes ; the happiness of generations 
destroyed ; the prosperity of countries blighted 
for centuries ; the rights of men trodden under 
foot; the progress of civilization set back for 
ages I Is it wonderful that the framers of our 
Constitution should not have intrusted a single 
officer with the foi-midable power of bringing all 
these calamities upon the Republic'? — an officer, 
too, who, for a certain time, does not stand under 
the immediate control of the representatives of 
the people. The war-making power — one most 
extensive, ijivolving the interests of a nation — is 
certainly one of the highest attributes of sove- 
reignty, and it was mostly reserved to that branch 
of the government in which the sovereignty of 
the people is most comprehensively represented. 
The power to declare war being withheld from 
the Executive, and expressly lodged in Congress, 
it follows that the Executive can have no autho- 
rity to use warlike measures, unless specially au- 
thorized by Congress ; for what would the exclu- 
sive power to declare war be worth to Congress, 



if the power to use belligerent measures without 
special authority — that is, to hring on or make 
war — were vested in the Executive 1 This is 
one of the distinguishing features of our consti- 
tutional system. It cannot be changed without 
breaking down the safeguards of our national 
security. No man who understands the spirit 
of American institutions, will fail to see this, and 
he who does not, may be said not to comprehend 
the tendency of our fundamental laws. Is it not 
surprising that we should find such a man in him 
who is held up to us as " the greatest of living 
statesmen "?" For a number of years, wherever 
there was a difficulty between this and a foreign 
government, Mr. Douglas endeavored again and 
again to invest the President with the power of 
using warlike measures at his own discretion, 
without waiting for the action of Congress. 
Here is a bill introduced by Douglas on the 24th 
of May, 1858: 

" Be it enacted, Sfc, That in case of flagrant violations 
of the laws of nations by outrage upon the flag, or soil, or 
citizens of the United States, or upon their property, under 
circumstances requiring prompt redress, and when, in the 
opinion of the President, delay would be incompatible 
with the honor and dignity of the Kepublic, the Presidtnt 
is hereby authorized to employ such force as he may 
deem necessary to prevent the perpetration of such out- 
rages, and to obtain just redress and satisfaction for the 
same when perpetrated ; and it shall be his duty to lay the 
facts of each case, with the reasons for bis action in the 
premises, before Congress at the earliest practicable mo- 
ment for such further action thereon as Congress may 
direct." 

This bill was introduced at a time when ves- 
sels belonging to the British navy, in the Gulf of 
Mexico, undertook to stop and search American 
merchantmen on the suspicion of their being 
slavers. The bill did not pass ; but whenever 
there was an opportunity, be it in a discussion on 
appropriations for the navy, or on the occasion 
of some foreign difficulty, he again and again 
has tried to bring about a fatal transfer of power. 
It was on the 18th of August, 1859, when he 
disclosed his views more fully and emphatically 
than ever before. The President, in a special 
message, asked for special authority to protect 
American citizens on the Transit route. Then 
Mr. Douglas expressed himself as follows : 

" I think the President ought to have the power to re- 
dress sudden injuries upon our citizens, or outrages upon 
our flag without waiting for the action of Congress. The 
Executive of every other nation on earth has that authori- 
ty, under their respective forms of government. * * * * 
I go further, Sir. I would entrust the Executive with the 
authority, when an outrage is perpetrated upon our ships 
and commerce, to punish it instantly, when he thinks the 
interest and the honor of the nation require prompt action. 
I would make this principle general in its application. I 
desire the President of the United States to have as much 
authority to protect American citizens and the American 
flag abroad as the Executive of every other civilized na- 
tion on earth possesses. * * * * i ^^ras willing to adopt 
the principle that this authority shall be vested in the 
President of the United States as a rightful authority and 
a permant-nt rule of action, applicable all over the world 
whenever hb thinks American interests and American 
honor require it to be exerted. * * * * When it is 
known that our Executive has the same authority outside 
of the United States that the British Premier and the 
French Emperor, or the head of any other nation pos- 
sesses, you will fiind there will be a less number of out- 
rages," &c. 

If Mr. Douglas had brought forward proposi- 
tions like this, in the heat of debate, aroused by 
warlike excitement, we might excuse him on the 
plea that his temper ran away with his judgment. 
But the frequent, deliberate, persistent reitera- 
tion of his views, must urge the conviction upon 
us that they have become with him a settled po- 
litical doctrine. Did he ever consider the extent 
and consequences of the change he demands t 



Does he know what it means, that the President 
shall have the power, without waiting for the ac- 
tion of Congress, to use the army and navy when 
he — not when Congress, but when he thinks the 
interests of the country require it % Suppose the 
President be a man of excitable temper — of more 
valor than discretion — or a man of inordinate 
ambition — or a wily politician, unscrupulous 
enough to involve the country in war in order to 
divert popular attention from home difficulties. 
Suppose such a President has the power to use 
the armed forces of the United States when he 
thinks fit. Will not our peace and security be 
entirely at the mercy of his temper, his ambition, 
or his unscrupulousness % 

This is not so dangerous, says Mr Douglas, for 
" not every belligerent act leads to war." No, 
certainly not; but if there is anything in the 
world apt to lead to war it is a belligerent act. 
It is true, according to Mr. Douglas's bill, the 
President will have to report to Congress " at the 
" earliest practicable moment ;" but will not the 
President be able, by an indirect use of the army 
or navy, to involve the country in war, to array 
nation against nation, long before that *' earliest 
"practicable moment" arrives 1 It is true Con- 
gress will, after a while, have power to stop the 
war ; but are you not aware that ours is a Gov- 
ernment which depends not always on a calm 
public opinion, but sometimes also on the pas- 
sions of the people % If once, by the measures 
of the President, we are in active hostilities — if 
once the intoxicating music of artillery has start- 
ed the warlike enthusiasm of the people — if once 
the fighting spirit of the masses is aroused by the 
sight of blood, will not then what was com- 
menced against the judgment of the people be 
pushed by their passions '? 

Mr. Douglas urged his proposition as often as 
there was a speck of war in the horizon. But 
those difficulties with Great Britain and the Cen- 
tral American Republics, for the prosecution 
of which he demanded that the Executive be 
invested with power to adopt warlike measures, 
have been settled by diplomatic transactions. 
Our peaceful relations with foreign Governments 
were hardly disturbed. Net a drop of blood was 
shed. The honor of the Republic remains intact, 
the Constitution inviolate. Suppose Mr. Douglas' 
notions had prevailed, and he had been Presi- 
dent of the United States, clothed with the dis- 
cretionary power he demanded. I ask you most 
seriously, and invite you to ponder the question, 
what wotild have been the result then ? 'How 
many outrages, real or imaginary, would he have 
punished with the army or navy, " without wait- 
ing for the action of Congress?" How often 
would he, unrestrained by Congress, have deemed 
instant redress necessary ? Into how many fol- 
lies would his childish hatred of Great Britain 
have betrayed him ? Into how many wars would 
his sensation policy have involved us within these 
last few years ? With the blood of your sons 
you would have paid the price of his indiscre- 
tions. Let the President have the power that 
Mr. Douglas demands for him, and the question 
of peace or war, of prosperity or desolation, will 
depend upon the temper of a single individual. 
Put Mr. Douglas in the Presidential chair, and 
give him, as he demands, the power of the French 
Emperor, and he will furnish not the prudence, 
but certainly the arbitrariness. 

But he contends that our Executive must have 
the power, because the Executive of every other 



8 



nation has it. Indeed I Does lie not know that 
just there is the difference hetween our system 
of Government and those of other countries ? 
Did it never occur to him that the establishment 
of imperial power in this Republic would require 
the entire overthrow of our checks and balances? 
Does he not know that even in the hands of a 
British Premier, this power is less formidable 
than it would be in the hands of a President, 
since the British Premier is subject to the imme- 
diate control of a parliamentary majority, and 
liable to be voted down and dismissed at any 
moment, which the President and his Secretary 
of State are not ? Oh, " greatest of living states- 
men!" if thou dost not know that, every sweet 
little school-boy can tell thee. But there you 
see him, " in the fullness of his ignorance of this 
" vast subject, in the maturity of his incapacity 
"to apprehend its merits," as Lord Brougham 
would style it, attempting to trample down the 
constitutional safeguards which surround the 
liberties, and the security of the nation. Such 
ignorance is dangerous when coupled with such 
pretensions. Let that " greatest of living states- 
men " study awhile the peculiar features which 
distinguish the republican government of Amer- 
• ica from the monarchical governments of the old 
world. Give him an opportunity to learn that 
an American President or Secretary of State was 
never intended to be a British Premier or a French 
Emperor. Let him learn to appreciate that sys- 
tem of nice balances of power in our Constitu- 
tion, which is the principal safeguard of our free- 
dom and security. But don't speak of placing 
him, such as he is, in the office of highest re- 
sponsibility. If you want a safe man to admin- 
ister your laws, select him among those who 
understand their spirit, not one who means to 
cushion his Presidential chair with imperial 
powers, and who would take delight in playing 
like a reckless boy with the club of Hercules. 

It is my suspicion that Mr. Douglas tried to 
effect that centralization of power in the hands 
of the President, expecting to be President him- 
self, and that then he would use it for the pur- 
pose of plunging the country into warlike enter- 
prises, to result in the conquering of Cuba and a 
part of Mexico, which policy of conquest would 
relieve him of the difficulties in which his posi- 
tion upon the Slavery question has involved him. 
I give this as my suspicion. You may judge for 
yourselves whether it is supported by any mate- 
rial evidence growing out of his past career and 
present situation. But the measure he urged and 
advocated is so dangerous and detestable in it- 
self, that no ulterior design can make it more 
damnable. It certainly is one of the acts dicta- 
ted by the evident desire to retrieve the lost fa- 
vor of tho Slavery propagandists by outdoing 
them in everything not immediately connected 
with the Territorial question. This may be con- 
sidered a grave charge, and I will substantiate it 
at once, for in these times Judge Douglas's states- 
manship shines with more than ordinary lustre. 

John Brown had made his insurrectionary at- 
tempt in Virginia. The Republicans openly dis- 
approved of the act, and denounced him in good 
faith, as they would disapprove and denounce 
every interference with the laws and institutions 
of other States, as a violation of the spirit of our 
institutions, which furnish for every evil a lawful 
remedy. But the South was excited, and Doug- 
las saw a chance for himself. He pounced upon 
it with almost indecent eagerness, morbidly anx- 



ious to anticipate the action of the Committee on 
the Harper's Ferry affair, which was expected to 
offer propositions applicable to the case. On the 
22d of January, 1860, he introduced the follow- 
ing resolution into the Senate : 

Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be in- 
structed to report a bill for ihc protection of each State and 
Territory in tbe [Inion against mvasion by the authorities, 
or inhabitants of any other State or Territory, and lor the 
suppression and punishment of conspiracies or combina- 
tions in any State or Territory with intent to invade, as- 
sail or molest the government, property or institutions of 
any other State or Territory of the Union. 

The true intent and meaning of this resolution, 
was made plain by the speech with which the 
Judge accompanied it. After having endeavored 
to show that the Constitution confers upon our 
Federal Government the power to do what the 
resolution contemplates, he then defines his ob- 
ject as follows : 

" Sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to use the 
military power when the actual case of invasion shall 
occur, but to authorize the judicial department of the 
Government to suppress all conspiracies and combina- 
tions in the several States with intent to invade a 
, State, or molest or disturb its government, its peace, 
its citizens, its property, or its institutions. You must 
suppress the conspiracy, tbe combination to do the act, and 
then you will suppress it in advance. * .* I demand 
that the Constitution be executed in good faith, so as 
to punish and suppress every combination, either to 
invade a State, or to molest its inhabitants, or to dis- 
turb its property, or to subvert its institutions and its 
government. I believe this can be effectually done by 
authorizing the United States Courts in the several 
States to take jurisdiction of the ofteuse, and punish 
the violation of the law with appropriate punish- 
ments." 

So much about the way in which the combi- 
nations can be and ought to be suppressed and 
punished. Now what are and where are the 
combinations 1 

" Sir," said the Judge, "what were the causes which 
produced the Harper's Ferry outrage ? Without stojj- 
ping to adduce the evidence in detail, I have no hesi- 
tancy in expressing my firm and deliberate conviction 
that ihe Hai-per's Ferry crime was the natural, logical 
and inevitable result of the doctrines and teachings of 
the Eepublican party, as explained and enforced in 
their platform, their partisan presses, their pamphlets 
and books, and especially in the speeches of their 
leaders in and out of Congress. * * * The great 
principle that underlies the Eepublican party, is vio- 
lent, irreconcilable, eternal warfare upon the institu- 
tions of American Slavery, with a view to its ultimate 
extinction throughout the land." 

This language is plain. There is the danger- 
ous combination with intent to carry on a vio- 
lent warfare against the institutions of other 
States. Now, let us see what the -Judge is going 
to do with the unfortunate combination to 
which, I am sorry to say, most of us belong. 

"Sir," says the Judge, "give us such a law as the 
Constitution contemplates and authorizes and I will 
show the Senator from New York that there is a con- 
stitutional mode of repressing the irrepressible con- 
flict. I will open the prison-door, and allow the conspi- 
rators against the peace of the Eepublic and the do- 
mestic tranquillity of other States to select their cells, 
wherein to drag out a miserable life as a punishment 
for their crimes against the peace of society." 

But in order to remove all doubt as to what 
the conspiracy and combination is, he proceeds : 

" Can any man say to us that, although this outrage 
has been perpetrated at Harper's Ferry, there is no 
danger of its recurrence ? Sir, is not the Republican 
party still embodied organized, confident of success 
and defiant in its pretensions ? Does it not now hold 
and proclaim the same creed as before the invasion ? 
Those doctrines remain the same. Those teachings 
are being poured into the minds of men throughout 
the country by means of speeches, and pamphlets and 
books, and through partisan presses. The causes that 
produced the Harper's Ferry invasion are now in active 
operation. * * Mr. President, the mode of preserv- 
ing peace is plain. This system of sectional warfare 



must cease. The Constitution has given the power ; 
and all we ask of Congress is to give the means, and 
we, by indictments and convictions in the Federal 
Courts of the several States, will make such examples 
of the leaders of such conspiracies as will strike terror 
into the hearts of others ; and there will he an end 
of this crusade. Sir we must check it by crushing 
out the conspiracy and combination; and then there 
can be safety." 

I confess, when I read that speecli, and the reso- 
lution in defense of which it was made, I stood 
horror-struck — not as though I had feared that a 
Congress could he found so degeneiate as to pass 
such a law, but because a Senator /latZ heen found 
who had the efFi'ontery to advocate it in the open 
halls of an American Legislature. ' This is not a 
mere figure of speech. I do not exaggerate. Only 
look at it. A treasonable attempt has been com- 
mitted. The offenders are punished. Mr. Douglas 
introduces a proposition for a law intended to pre- 
vent a repetition of the attempt. He pretends to 
discover the origin of the treasonable attempt in 
the opinions and doctrines of a great national 
party. He charges that party with urging a sec- 
tional warfare and crusade aaainst the institutions 
of some, of the States, and declares that this cru- 
sade is carried on by speeches, pamphlets, books, 
and partisan presses— by ideas being poured into 
the minds of the people. He declares that there 
can be no peace as long as those causes which 
produced the treasonable attempt remain in active 
operation. He proposes to clieck this crusade 
by crushing out the conspiracies and combina- 
tions by which it is carried on ; and the means 
by which he intends to crush them out are 
indictments and convictions in the Federal 
Courts, making such examples of the leaders as 
will strike terror into the liearts of others. He 
proposes to open prison cells for them, wlierein 
to drag out a miserable life. This is the proposi- 
tion submitted to the Senate of the American 
Republic — not by the King of Naples, not by the- 
Vizier of the Turkish Sultan, not by the Chief of 
Police of the Russian Czar, not by one of the 
Terrorists of the French Revolution — but by 
an American Senator, on the 23d of July, 1860. 
I will not stoop to defend the Republican party 
against these accusations. They are of so ridi- 
culous, so preposterous a nature, as not to call 
for the serious notice of any candid man. But 
no matter. Let us embody the intent and mean- 
ing of Mr. Douglas's resolution and speech in 
the shape of a law. It will probably read as 
follows : 

"Section 1. Be it enacted, Sfc , That if any person or 
persons, residing in any State or Territory, shall unlawfully 
combine or conspire together, with intent to invade, assail 
or molest the Government, inhabitants, property, or insti- 
tutions, of any other State or Territory, or if any person or 
persons, with intent, as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise, or 
attempt to procure any riot, invasion, unlawful assembly, 
or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, 
counsel, advice, or attempt, shall have the proposed effect 
or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misde- 
meanor, and upon conviction "before any Court of the Uni- 
ted States, having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished 

by a fine not exceeding dollars, or by imprisonment 

during a term not less than years, nor exceeding 

years ; and further, at the discretion of the Court, may be 
holden to find security for his good behavior, in such sum, 
and for such time, as the Court may direct." 

This section would cover the conspiracies and 
combinations themselves. But Douglas says that 
such treasonable things will be repeated as long 
as the causes from which they spring remain in 
active operation. He, therefore, wants to crush 
out the causes ; which may be done by section, 
second : 

" Seo. 2. And be it further enacted, That if any person, 
2 



inhabitant of any one State or Territory, shall \vi ite, print, 
utter, or publish or shall cause or procure to bo written, 
printed, or uttered, or published, or shall knowingly or 
willingly authorize or aid in writing, printing, uttering, or 
publishing any scandalous or malicious writing or wri- 
tings against the Government, inhabitants, laws, or insti- 
tutioiis'of other States or Territories, with intent to defame 
the said Government, inhabitants, laws, or institutions, or 
to excite against them the hatred of the good p ople of 
any of the Stales, or to excite any unlawful combinations 
for invading, assailing, or molesting the Government, in- 
habitants, property, o'r institutions, of other States or Ter- 
ritories, being thereof convicted before any Court of the 
United States having jurisdiction thereof, he shall be pun- 
ished by a fine not exceeding dollars, and by impris- 
onment not exceeding years." 

Every candid person will at once admit that 
these two sections, as I have drawn them, contain 
nothing — not a single point, -not a single expres- 
sion, that is not expressly and directly suggested 
by Mr. Douglas's resolution and speech. It so 
hai)pens that a law like this is not without prece- 
dent in the history of this Republic. It is not 
quite unknown to our own statute book, for the 
two sections I laid before you are embodied with 
scrupulous accuracy. Mr. Douglas's propositions 
are the literal copy of the notorious Sedition Law 
0/1798. I only put in "Governments, inhabit- 
" ants, property, or institutions of other States 
" and Territories," instead of " Government of 
" the United States or either House of Congress." 
The rest is exactly alike; no, let me not slander 
the Sedition Law. The terms of imprisonment 
prescribed by the Sedition Law are moderate, not 
exceeding two and five years respectively, while 
Mr. Douglas insists upon his victims "dragging 
out in their prison cells their miserable lives," 
of which ten years would evidently not be suffi- 
cient. Then this Sedition Law was enacted only 
for a very limited period, after which it Avas tc 
expire, while Mr. Douglas intends the Conspiracy 
Act to be a permanent institution of the country. 
These two features make the Sedition Law emi- 
nently liberal in comparison with Douglas's Con- 
spiracy Bill. 

There may be some old man among us whc 
remembers the time when the Sedition law wa?, 
enacted — he will tell you that the same act which 
was intended to prevent insurrection, led people 
upon the very brink of an insurrection ; he will 
tell you that patriots, horrified at that time io\ 
the liberties of the people, thought of the neces- 
sity of a second revolution. The excitement of 
those days has left its monument in the history 
of this country — that monument is the Kentucky 
and Virginia resolutions, drawn by Jefferson and 
Madison. These resolutions were the loud out- 
cry of patriotic hearts against the first flagrant 
attempt at the centralization of Governmental 
power. The Democratic party has indorsed them 
again. It claims Jefferson as its father. What 
would Jefferson, the author of the Kentucky res- 
olutions, say of his degenerate offspring who 
have nominated a man for the Presidency who 
attempts to repeat the most tyrannical and out- 
rageous act of the Federalists in the same outra- 
geous form ? Would he not tell them that they 
must be mistaken in their ancestry ? 

Let me show the consequence of the measure, 
and you will understand why its forerunner cre- 
ated such serious alarm and apprehension. So 
far our political parties have been fighting with, 
arguments. The victors obtained possession of 
the constitutional power, and administered the 
Government, but had no power to violate the 
rights and liberties of those that were defeated. 
However the contest of parties may have ended, 



10 



the peace of the country was never materially 
disturbed, for the vanquished knew that their 
individual security was not impaired. Such was 
the uniform result of the fight with arguments. 
But let the political parties once begin to fight with 
indictments — put into their hands the two-edged 
weapon of persecution, and whatever delusion 
you may indulge in, the liberties of the people 
will be no more secure in America than they are 
in Austria and Naples. 

There is one kind of despotism more terrible 
than that of kings — that is the despotism of 
political parties. Their tendency is not only to 
defeat but to oppress their opponents. However 
pure their first intentions may be, they will, in 
the heat of political contest, insensibly drift into 
that irresistible current. There is but one way 
to prevent this : it is that the means of oppres- 
sion and persecution be carefully kept out of 
their reach by strictly limiting and circumscrib- 
ing the powers of the Government. Do not say 
that these dangerous tendencies may be averted 
by a change of parties. It is oppression that 
engenders an oppressive spirit ; upon persecution 
follows revolution and revenge — that is, new per- 
secution, and so on. You may know where it 
begaa, but not where it will end. The framers 
of our Constitution understood that well ; they 
defined the crimes of which the Federal Courts 
shall have jurisdiction with scrupulous nicety. 
They laid down the doctrine that treason against 
the Government shall consist in levying war 
against the United States, not in giving aid and 
comfort to their enemies, and nothing else ; and 
that no person shall be convicted of treason 
unless upon the testimony of two witnesses, not 
to the " combination with treasonable intent," 
but to the overt act, thus carefully guarding 
against the idea of constructive treason. They 
knew well that the usual rules of legal construc- 
tion in regard to common crimes should not be 
applied to political matters in which conscience 
and the freedom of opinion is involved, because 
justice in one might become oppression and 
tyranny in the other case. But even these con- 
stitutional safeguards appeared so insufficient to 
the people of those days, that in the amendments 
to the Constitution they surrounded the funda- 
mental rights and liberties of the citizen with a 
new bulwark of emphatic declaration. Hence 
this fierce, indignant uncompromising opposition 
to every measure tending to give latitude to the 
power of the Government over individual rights. 

Judge Douglas seems to have no conception 
of the groundwork upon which the safety of 
popular liberty rests. Let him not pretend to 
say that he intended the law for the prevention 
of political offenses, for he ought to know, as 
every well-informed man knows, that of all the 
laws in the world which fasten the chains of 
despotism upon mankind, there is hardly one 
which does not rest upon the pretext that political 
oflTenses must be prevented. Prevention of mis- 
chief was the snare with which people in all 
ages and all countries have been prevented from 
asserting their liberties. Preventive laws are the 
poison with which freedom is killed. It is said 
that, years ago, an American citizen met Prince 
Metternich in the city of Brussels, You remem- 
ber who Prince Metternich was. The history of 
the world hardly knows the minister who had to 
answer for more tears and curses of crushed 
nations. The American showed him the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and asked his opin- 



ion of it. " This Constitution," said the Prince, 
"and I can govern the Empire of Austria \vith 
it." " What is that 1" asked the American with 
astonishment, "It is the power of the central 
government to pass preventive laws." What a 
pity Prince Metternich is dead. In Judge Doug- 
las he would have found the man of his heart. 
Put the Judge's Conspiracy Bill upon our statute 
book, and declare it Constitutional, and the de- 
ficiency is supplied. Prince Metternich is willing 
to govern Austria, after his fashion, with the 
Constitution of the United States. Place the 
power to indict and punish for combinations and 
for criminal intent in political matters into the 
hands of our Federal Judges, those petty pro- 
consuls who feel big when they can show their 
power, and we shall soon have a little Star Cham- 
ber in every little judicial district, a little Fou- 
quier Tinville to act as prosecuting attorney, and 
a little JeflTries to pass the sentences of the court, 
there will be a government spy to smell out 
treasonable combinations wherever three or four 
of them are assembled, and the cells of your 
prisons filled with men who have the spirit to 
think and speak about Slavery as Washington, 
Jefferson, Madison and Franklin thought and 
spoke. 

And there are those who dare to call the man 
who proposed to inaugurate such a system of 
policy, a ''great statesman." To the honor of 
Southern men be it said in both cases, when he 
proposed to confer the war-making power upon 
the President, as when he introduced the New 
Sedition Law, he had the mortification of being 
put down by a slaveholder. It was in both cases 
Jefferson Davis, the leader of the Fire-eaters, 
who had the patriotic spirit to vindicate our Re- 
publican institutions against the disgusting 
schemes of Northern demagogues. 

But a Northern man also was listening with 
indignant astonishment to Douglas's speech in 
favor of the New Sedition Law ; that was the 
brave John Hickman, of Pennsylvania, the Anti- 
Lecompton Democrat, who believed what he 
said. And when he left the Senate Chamber he 
broke out in the words: "On thy belly shalt 
thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of 
thy life." 

And well might he say so, for the proposition 
whispered into the ears of the fairest of our kind 
by the serpent of Paradise was hardly more infa- 
mous and infernal than the proposition Douglas 
Avhispered in the ears of the present generation. 

Where did Mr. Douglas learn these doctrines ? 
He has been in Europe. Unable to comprehend 
the means by which liberty is to be preserved in 
this country, he seems to have studied the means 
by which people are enslaved there. Not in 
England, but in France and Russia, he found 
much to admire. ( I don't know whether he 
visited Austria and Naples.) He basked in the 
sunshine of the smiles of the Czar, Nicholas, 
The smiles of a despot sank deeply into his heart, 
and this conspiracy bill grew out of it. 

And this is your "greatest of living statesmen," 
If this is the ruling statesmanship of our days, 
then good night, dearly-bought liberties ! good 
night, bright American Republic ! good night, 
great beacon of struggling humanity ! If it is: 
statesmanship to subvert the principles of the 
Constitution, undermine the liberties of the peo- 
ple, to place the security of the individual at 
the mercy of the centralized Government, then, 
indeed, he is one of the greatest, and his statue 



11 



deserves to be erected side by side with that of 
the illustrious Cataline of Rome, and the patri- 
otic Strafford of England. I do not fear that the 
man who made the infamous attempt will be 
elevated to the highest trust in this Republic, for 
a just fate has already irrevocably decreed against 
him ; but I do fear that there may be thousands 
of men who will not have spirit enough to stig- 
matize him with their repudiation. I appeal 
to you, American freemen. Your hearts cannot 
harbor the sincere feeling of gratitude for the 
heroes and sages who gave liberty to this land, 
if you do not harbor a curse for the man 
who attempts to destroy it with his insidious 
schemes. 

Let me proceed : It would seem that the policy 
of a man who introduces and advocates such 
measures, must spring either from the profound- 
est ignorance of the principles upon which the 
liberty of men is maintained, or an innate love of 
the principles by which the liberty of men is 
subverted. It will, therefore, surprise you a 
little when I tell you that Douglas's system of 
policy rests upon the basis of a profound philo- 
sophical doctrine concerning the only safe foun- 
dation upon which human liberty rests. It has 
always struck me as very remarkable, and it may 
have occurred to a great many of you, that Mr. 
Douglas's mind, with all its acuteness aiid fer- 
tility and resources, is exceedingly barren in 
original conception. All the speeches he has 
delivered since 1854 carry the peculiar flavor of 
staleness about them. They contain nothing but 
some stereotyped and somewhat commonplace 
ideas, played in a sonorous, mellow swell of lan- 
guage which derives its principal charm from the 
animal vigor and energy with which it is puffed 
out. 

And here permit me to say, by the way, that 
in my humble judgment I consider him one of 
the most over-estimated men in the country. 
But his speeches do contain one original idea, 
and I tell you that is a bright one ; it belongs all 
to him; nobody ever advocated it before, and 
nobody will hereafter. We have been laboring 
under the impression that Douglas did not care 
whether Slavery be voted up or doAvn; but we 
must beg his pardon — it turns out that he does 
care ; for the only original idea he can boast of 
is that Slavery must necessarily exist for the 
sake of — variety. [Laughter.] Don't laugh, I 
pray you — it is a very serious matter — it is the 
fundamental principle upon which Mr. Douglas's 
whole statesmanship rests ; and as he is the 
greatest statesman alive, it certainly deserves a 
serious consideration. He tells us that it is the 
very issue upon which he conducted the canvass 
in Illinois in 1858 — it is the very ground upon 
which he placed the necessity of his Conspiracy 
bill, and he has peddled it all over the Union in 
numberless speeches. 

The original idea, as expressed in his own lan- 
guage, is simply this: "I assert," said he, in his 
speech opening the canvass of 1858, " that 
" the great fundamental system which un- 
" derlies our complex system of State and Fede- 
" ral Governments, which implies diversity and 
" dissimilarity in local institutions and domestic 
" affairs of each and every State then in the Un- 
" ion, or thereafter to be admitted. I therefore 
" conceive that Mr. Lincoln has totally misappre- 
" bended the great principles upon which our 
"Government rests. Uniformity in local and 
** domestic affairs would be destructive of States' 



" rights, of States' sovereignty — of personal lib- 
" erty and personal freedom. Wherever the doc- 
" trine of uniformity is proclaimed ; that all the 
" States must he free or slave ; that all the labor 
" must he white or hlack ; that all the citizens of 
" the different States must have the same privi- 
" leges, or must be ruled by the same regulations ; 
" you have destroyed the greatest safeguards 
" which our institutions have thrown around the 
'• rights of the citizen. From this view of the 
'•' case I am driven irresistibly to the conclusion 
" that diversity, dissimilarity, variety in all our 
" local and domestic institutions is the great safe- 
" guard of our liberties. * * I repeat, that 
" uniformity in our institutions is neither possi- 
"ble nor desirable." 

This may sound very profound, but it will not 
require many words to show you how exceed- 
ingly ridiculous it is. Whatever your opinions 
of the Judge's statesmanship may be, permit me 
to say that whenever he attempts- to act the phi- 
losopher, he becomes- — not to put too fine a point 
upon it — very funny. 

His argument is, tljat there is a variety of in- 
terests or domestic afflairs in the country ; that a 
variety of local institutions grows out of them ; 
that upon this variety of institutions our federal 
system of Government rests ; that the federal 
system of Government is the great safeguard of 
our liberties ; that consequently in order to pre- 
serve our liberties it is necessary to preserve a 
variety of 'domestic affairs and local institutions. 
The question arises, if that variety of domestic 
affairs and local institutions did not exist, would 
tljat render the federal system of government 
impossible 1 In other words, would a people, 
among whom there is no such variety of domes- 
tic affairs and local institutions, be incapable of 
freedom ? 

The original States entered into a union as 
separate organizations — whether distinct and 
separate on the ground of a variety of interests, 
or for any other reason, is needless to discuss, 
for if their institutions and interests had been 
ever so uniform, it is evident that they could and 
would not have consolidated. But a conclusive 
refutation of the Judge's theory lies nearer. The 
people of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and 
Wisconsin, are nearly all depending upon the 
same resources — these States are all essentially 
agricultural, and, besides, have some shipping 
interest upon the great lakes. Their domestic 
affairs and local institutions are essentially the 
same. Their system of labor is the same — neither 
of them holds slaves. The uniformity of Free 
Labor was introduced there by the Ordinance in 
'87. According to the Judge's theory, they must 
consolidate if there is among them no variety of 
domestic affairs and local institutions which keep 
them asunder. It might be said that they cannot 
consolidate now on account of constitutional 
obstacles. Granted, for argument's sake. But 
that vast extent of land was consolidated once in 
one great solid mass, called the North- Western 
Territory. Why did it not remain consolidated ? 
Why was it cut up into different Territories and 
States, since their domestic interests were the 
same, their local institutions the same, their sys- 
tem of labor the same ? There was complete 
uniformity, and yet the very opposite of consoli- 
dation. All these things remain essentially the 
same. And do they desire to consolidate ? And 
is it necessary to make half of them Slave States 
in order to keep them asunder ? It is prepos- 



12 



terous. But this example shows that not Mr. 
Lmcoln but Judge Douglas must have entirely 
misconceived the source from which our political 
institutions spring. 

That source is nothing else but the instinct of 
self-government animating our people. Why do 
we cut vip our States into counties and town- 
ships — even its States in which the interests and 
domestic affairs of the people are everywhere quite 
uniform ? For the simple reason that the instinct 
of self-government demands that all the functions 
of sovereignty which the people can exercise by 
direct action should remain in the hands of the 
people ; and that all political power which can- 
not be exercised by that direct action should be 
so organized as to remain as near the original 
source of sovereignty as possible. This renders 
necessary such divisions and local organizations 
as will place the direct administration of the 
nearest home affairs immediately into the hands 
of the people. The affairs a little more remote 
in general are intrusted to the State Govern- 
ments, subject to the immediate control of the 
people ; while the affairs of interests still more 
remote in general are put into the hands of the 
Federal Government, This ramification, division, 
and subdivision of political power is carried out 
no less where there is a uniformity of domestic 
affairs and local institutions, than where there 
exists variety. It will remain such just as long 
as the people insist upon administering these 
affairs by as direct an exercise of sovereignty as 
possible, and no longer. To pretend that this 
ramification of political power into a complex 
gradation of functions cannot exist without there 
being a variety of interests and domestic institu- 
tions, would be to say that the people among 
whom thei'e is no such variety cannot be free ; 
and that is a nonsense which the merest school- 
boy would be ashamed of. 

But suppose, for argument sake, a variety of 
interests were really so great and indispensable a 
prop and pillar of our institutions of self-govern- 
ment — is Judge Douglas unacquainted with the 
difference between manufacturing Massachusetts 
and Connecticut and commercial New York — be- 
tween mining Pennsylvania and agricultural Illi- 
nois 1 But that variety does not seem to be suf- 
ficient for the Judge — there is still too much 
uniformity in it. He insists that " where the 
*■ doctrine of uniformity is proclaimed all the 
" States must be free or slave — that all labor 
"must be white or black." Our liberties must 
necessarily go by the board, therefore we must 
have more variety. The variety of manufactur- 
ing and commercial, mining and agricultural 
products, is sadly insufficient. He insists that 
there must be a little variety of Freedom and 
Slavery, of white and black labor ; and that 
seems to be his favorite mixture ; his cardinal 
fundamental, sine qua non variety ; and not only 
have we no right to establish uniform Free Labor 
by encroaching upon the rights of the States, but 
quite as a general thing, the extinction of his 
favorite variety, *' would be neither possible nor 
" desirable." He declares it to be " a fatal heresy 
" to proclaim that there can or ought to be uni- 
*'formity among the different States of this 
" Union." It would, then, according to the Judge, 
not be desirable that Free Labor should prevail 
everywhere, for that would create uniformity, 
and uniformity is the death of Freedom. 

And now mark that wonderful muddle of non- 
sense in the head of that " greatest of living 



"statesmen" — our liberties rest upon our Fede- 
ral system of Government ; our Federal system 
of Government rests upon the variety of institu- 
tions; that variety of institutions consists of 
there being Slavery in some of the States. If 
Slavery disappeared, that variety would disap- 
pear ; if that variety disappeared, our Federal 
system of Government would disappear; if our 
Federal system of Government disappeared, the 
safeguards of our liberties would be destroyed — 
consequently, if Slavery disappears liberty dis- 
appears also. 

Again, if all the States were free there would 
he uniformity ; but uniformity in local and do- 
mestic affairs would be destructive of personal 
liberty — that uniformity is prevented by the ex- 
istence of Slavery, consequently the existence of 
Slavery prevents the destruction of liberty ; or 
liberty cannot be preserved but by the preserva- 
tion of Slavery. 

What benefactors of our humanity were those 
who introduced Slavery into our land '? for they 
furnished the material out of which the neces- 
sary variety was made, without which our liberty 
cannot exist. If they had not done so, then all 
the States would be free ; there would be uni- 
formity, and we would all be slaves ! What non- 
sense to abolish the slave trade ! The more 
slaves, the more variety — the more variety, the 
more freedom. 

How we must pity the unfortunate nations that 
have no Slavery among them ; for they have no 
variety of institutions, and having no variety 
of institutions, they can have no liberty. Poor 
people that have no slaves among them ; they 
can never be free ! 

It is a little surprising, however, that this great 
and luminous doctrine of " variety " should have 
been so little known about the time when our 
Government was organized and the Constitution 
framed. There were two individuals living then 
who enjoyed some little reputation for statesman- 
ship, one of whom said : '* I trust we shall have 
a Confederacy of Free States ;" and the othei 
said: " Nothing is more certainly written in the 
Book of Fate than that those people [meaning 
the slaves] are to be free." And they were 
called statesmen ! What an immense progress 
we have made in these seventy years ! They 
v/ould be called simpletons or traitors now ; for 
they either knew nothing of the great doctrine 
of ^' variety" — which was very foolish — or, if 
they knew it, they plotted the destruction of 
popular freedom by advocating uniformity — 
which certainly was very treasonable. By the 
way, the name of one was George Washington, 
and the name of the other, Thomas Jefferson. 
You will be obliged to confess that you were 
very much mistaken in those two men. What a 
pity Judge Douglas did not live in those days. 
How he would have knocked his great doctrine 
of variety about their ears ! How he would 
have taught Washington what the definition of 
our Federal system is ! How he would have 
told Jefferson what the great safeguards of 
liberty are ! 

But, alas ! such statesmen are sometimes born 
not only out of season, but also out of place. 
What a pity Judge Douglas does not live in Switz- 
erland, the oldest Kepublic now extant. Those 
benighted people, the Swiss, have been for cen- 
turies indulging in the foolish delusion that tley 
were free, and that they had a federal system of 
Government. Why there is no Slavery in Switz/» 



la 



erland — there is not the necessary variety of in- 
stitutions there. Their States are ail Free States. 
There is uniformity there. How can they have 
federal institutions with uniformity 1 How can 
there be liberty without variety? Impossible. 
Poor, innocent souls ! they think they are free, 
and have no slaves. Let the Judge go at once 
on a missionary expedition to liberate the Swiss. 
He will have an opportunity to try that other 
great original idea of his, that *' any political 
" creed must be radically wrong which cannot be 
" proclaimed everywhere." I venture to predict 
that every honest Swiss boot will lift itself and 
kick the great variety Douglas respectfully from 
Alp to Alp. 

Now look at the strange consequences into 
which his variety doctrine inevitably leads him. . 
The necessity of preserving Slavery for the sake 
of Liberty — that is, of preserving the variety of 
institutions — was the principal ground upon 
which he placed the necessity of passing his Con- 
spiracy bill. The same man who tells us that 
Slavery must be preserved because its extinction 
would bring about uniformity, which, in its turn, 
would produce a consolidated despotic Govern- 
ment — the same man advocates the passage of a 
measure investing the Government with powers 
which put it upon the courses of consolidation ; 
for, without the grant of these powers, without 
that act of consolidation, Slavery cannot be main- 
tained. Slavery, according to him, must be pre- 
served by a measure which is necessary to popu- 
lar liberty ; for, if Slavery is not preserved, uni- 
formity will ensue, and the liberties of the peo- 
ple will be in danger. In other words, he tells us 
that the existence of Slavery is necessary for the 
preservation of our rights and liberties, and then 
he tells us that a measure undermining our rights 
and liberties is necessary for the preservation of 
Slavery. The variety must be kept up for the 
purpose of maintaining our liberties, and our lib- 
erties must be put down for the purpose of keep- 
ing the variety. 

We are, indeed, greatly indebted to Judge 
Douglas. At last we know what Slavery is good 
for, and why its extinction is neither possible nor 
desirable. Even the black man, in his sufferings, 
will find a soothing consolation in the Judge's 
philosophy. When Sambo is flogged down South, 
and the whip lacerates his back, the benevolent 
Judge will tell the poor fellow that he has got to 
"be whipped for the sake of variety [laughter] ; 
and Sambo will smile in the sweet consciousness 
of being whipped for a very great principle. 
[Renewed laughter.] And when the Judge's bill 
has passed, he has opened for you the prison cells 
wherein he blandly invites you " to drag out your 
miserable lives," you will with pride remember 
the old Roman proverb, " Dulce et decorum est 
'^patria mori;^^ and improving upon the text 
you will exclaim, " It is most sweet and honor- 
"able to die for variety's sake.'' 

This, then, is Judge Douglas's philosophy of 
government ; not an idea occasionally dropped 
in a speech, but his great original conception. 
This shallow, ridiculous, childish nonsense, is 
what he emphatically proclaims to be the funda- 
mental doctrine of his whole political wisdom I 
Oh, Douglas Democrats, how proud you must 
feel of your " greatest statesman alive." Permit 
me to offer you, in the name of the Republican 
party,, our sincerest congratulations. 

Gentlemen : You have accompanied my re- 
marks with some evidence of merriment ; and^ 



indeed, it cannot be denied that there is some of 
the profundity of the illustrious Dogberry in Mr. 
Douglas's philosophical doctrines. But this is a 
serious matter. Do you not see that to some 
extent the honor of the country is involved in if? 
That gentleman stands before us a candidate for 
the Presidency, and he is represented to be the 
" greatest American statesman." And now, I 
entreat you, I implore you solemnly — for there 
is no man here who has the reputation of this 
country more deeply at heart than I have — I im- 
plore you, do not make this Republic ridiculous 
in the eyes of the whole world by attempting to 
crown that Dogberry statesman with the highest 
honors of the Republic. I am not jesting ; I am 
in deep and solemn earnest ; for if you look over 
the list of those men who, since the organization 
of the Republic, have been deemed worthy of a 
vote for the Presidency, you will find not one 
among them who has laid more insiduous 
schemes to subvert the principles of the Constitu- 
tion, who did more to debauch the consciences 
of the people, more to bring American statesman- 
ship into contempt than he. No, I will not wrong 
Judge Douglas ; there was one ; I mean Aaron 
Burr. He was a more dangerous man, for he 
united to a depraved heart a far superior under- 
standing. 

But, as to Judge Douglas, here I stand up before 
the great jury of the sovereign people and bring 
my bill of indictment, 

I arraign him for having changed his posi- 
tion in regard to the Missouri restriction, time 
and again, according to the interests of Slavery. 

I arraign him for having broken the plighted 
faith of the people by the repeal of the Comprom- 
ise of 1820. 

I arraign him for having upheld the most 
atrocious violations of the ballot-box ; for having 
trampled upon the most sacred rights of the peo- 
ple of Kansas, so long as the struggle between 
Freedom and Slavery was doubtful. 

I arraign him for having committed a fraud 
upon the people by forging and adulterating the 
principle of Popular Sovereignty, and making it 
the machine of Slavery propagandism. 

I arraign him for having deserted the cause of 
Free Kansas when the people, having complied 
with all reasonable conditions, applied for admis- 
sion into the Union. 

I arraign him for having repeatedly made the 
attempt to disturb the system of constitutional 
checks and balances, by placing the war-making 
power in the hands of the President. 

I arraign him for having attempted, by his 
conspiracies, a thing more outrageous than the 
Sedition Law of 1798, to put the liberties of 
speech and press at the mercy of a political in- 
quisition, and to make the judicial persecution 
of opinions a standard system of policy. 

I arraign him, lastly, for having attempted to 
pass off upon the people the doctrines of political 
philosophy, which is an insult to the popular 
understanding. No, I beg your pardon, I do 
not arraign him for that, for this is a free 
country, where everybody has a right to make 
himself as ridiculous as he pleases, "subject only 
to the Constitution of the United States." [Loud 
laughter.] And, yet, I arraign him for that also, 
for I protest that he has no right to make the 
Republic ridiculous with him. 

Here is the charge. It is for the people to give 
the verdict. 

Gentlemen", will yon have patience enough to 



14 



listen to a few remarks about Douglas, " the Pre- 
sidential candidate ?" Well, after these exploits 
he thought he was fit to be a Democratic candi- 
date for the Presidencj^, and so his name went 
before the Charleston Convention. But, won- 
derful to tell, the whole Southern Democracy 
seemed to be united against him ; and I honestly 
declare I think the Slave Power did wrong. It 
might have found a more abject and less exact- 
ing tool, but it could hardly expect to find a 
more daring, reckless and unscrupulous one. 
What was the reason of their opposition 1 Was 
it the Constitutional quibbles about which they 
had been contending 1 The whole difference M-as 
merely imaginary. Was it the slaveholders 
thought a man who had betrayed his own section 
of the country could not be relied upon in his 
promises to be faithful to another 1 That was 
more honorable than judicious in the Slave 
Power, governed by such a feeling. No, I think 
the true reason widely differs from this, and it 
shows that Mr. Douglas never had the sjigacity 
enough to understand his own position. The Slave 
Power will sometimes, for expediency's sake, 
condescend to make a Northern man President, 
if he consents to be its unconditional tool, but it 
will never elevate one who aspires to be or be- 
come a leader of the party. Mr. Douglas ought 
to have understood that. There was his mistake. 
However willing he may have been to serve them, 
he had to serve them not in his, but in their own 
way. He affected independence, and he fell. I 
think the South acted against their own interest, 
for in Judge Douglas they would have had a man 
in the Presidential chair who would have shrunk 
from nothing to regain their favor. It is my 
conviction that he would have been a more ulrra 
Pro-slavery President than Breckinridge, or Jef- 
ferson Davis, or Slidell, and 1 wish they would 
still conclude to take him, so as to place every 
man in his proper position. You see we are not 
afraid of your combinations. 

But the mistake Avas committed. They op- 
posed him to the last, and Judge Douglas saw 
that his nomination in Charleston was an impos- 
sibility. Then his friends moved an adjourn- 
ment of the Convention, and carried it. They 
were to re-assemble at Baltimore a few weeks 
afterward. In the meantime, Mr. Douglas saw 
a last chance of appeasing the South. He 
grasped at it with desperate eagerness, and he 
saw the great prize slipping from his hands, and 
he staked his all upon a last cast. On the 15th 
and 16th of May, he arose in the Senate, and in 
one of the most elaborate efforts of his life, he 
made the following statement, and Douglas De- 
mocrats I claim your special attention. Listen : 

"It is part of the history of that country that 
under this doctrine of non-intervention — this 
doctrine that you delight to call Squatter Sove- 
reignty — the people of New Mexico have intro- 
duced and protected Slavery in the whole of that 
Territory, under the doctrine they have converted 
a tract of Free Territory into Slave Territory 
move than five times the size of the State of New 
York. Under this doctrine Slavery has been ex- 
tended not only up to 36° 30', but up to Z8^', 
giving you a degree and a half more of slave 
Territory than you ever claimed. * * * What- 
ever inch of Free Territory has been converted 
into Slave Territory on the American continent 
since the Revolution, except in New Mexico and 
Virginia, under the principle of non-intervention 
affirmed at Charleston 1 If it be true that this 



principle of non-intervention has protected Sla- 
very in that comparatively Northern and cold 
region, where you did not expect it to go, cannot 
you trust the same principle^ further South, 
when you come to acquire additional Territory 
from Mexico 1 Will not the same principle pro- 
tect in the Northern States of Mexico when tliey 
are acquired, since they are now surrounded by 
Slave Territory 1 " 

Oh, Douglas men, what a lesson is this ! Did 
you not tell us that when the Nebraska bill was 
enacted, that this law was the most efficient Avay 
of introducing Free Labor into the Territories 1 
Have you not most solemnly assured us every 
day since 1854 that the principle of Popular 
Sovereignty as expounded by Mr. Douglas would 
most certainly save all the Territories from the 
grasp of Slavery 1 And now look there ! Your 
own master and prophet admits, acknowledges, 
and BOASTS of it — that this same principle gave 
to Slavery one and one-half degrees of latitude 
more than it ever claimed, and that since the 
organization of the American Republic not a 
square foot of Free Territory was ever converted 
into Slave Territory, but by the same measure 
which you represented to us as the greatest and 
most reliable engine of Free Labor ! Your own 
master and prophet tells you in your own faces, 
and in the face of all mankind, and in the face 
of posterity, that you have been lying most atro- 
ciously — lying every day for the last six years. 
This was unkind — was it not, Douglasites of the 
North ? 

No ; I am not joking. It was terribly unkind. 
All he said was most certainly, most undoubt- 
edly, most uncontrovertibly true ; but I de- 
clare that if he had the least regard for the feel- 
ings of his friends — the least sympathy for them 
in their awkward embarrassments — he, he ought 
to have been the last on earth to make that state- 
ment. Did he know that you had supported him 
and made friends for him on the false pretence 
that his great principle worked the exclusion of 
Slavery from the Territories ? Did he not know 
that you had pledged your honor — had staked 
your character for truth and veracity upon that 
pretence ? He knew it well. He had encouraged 
you in doing so ; and, after you have compro- 
mised yourself for him, day after day, in the eyes 
of the whole world, he turns and gives you most 
unceremoniously the lie. Oh, that was ungene- 
rous ! It was mean — very mean — unspeakably 
mean. If your self-sacrificing friendship had 
awakened the least echo in his heart, he ought to 
have been the last man to do so. But that heart 
seems to be so filled with calloused selfishness — 
so destitute of the generous impulses of human 
nature — that if Ms friends, like Broderick, die 
for him, he coldly disowns him ; and if they lie 
for him, he promptly puts them to shame. Dis- 
owns them and puts them to shame. And for 
what? For the purpose of retrieving the lost 
favors of the South ; regaining the lost smiles of 
the Slave Power, to be sacrificed to them. Was 
that the reward you had deserved at his hands ? 

Look at it again. See, he stands before the 
slaveholders in the Senate of the United States 
busy bargaining away your honor for their favors. 
" Who has ever served you more faithfully than 
" I with my great principle ?" he asks them. 
"Why not let my friends in the North preacb up 
" that principle as the Pioneer of Freedom ? The 
" fools, perhaps, believing in wbat they say, but 
" we know better. Do you not see the result ? 



15 



" Why not permit me tlie innocent joke of bam- 
" boozling the people of the North into believing 
"that I am the great Champion of Freedom?" 
Ah, Douglas men, what a sight is this ! He has 
prostituted you,- and now proclaims your dis- 
grace. How do you like the attitude in which 
he has placed you ? How do you like the pillory 
to which, with his own hand, he has nailed your 
ears ? And you are willing to stand there — stand 
there quietly in the eyes of mankind. Do you 
not sometimes hear an earnest voice speaking 
within you, speaking of a self-respect and the 
natural dignity of man ? Does it never tell you 
that the fairest blush of shame would be an orna- 
ment to your cheeks ? My friends, I love to 
esteem all that bears the attributes of human 
nature ; but if sometimes, at an unguarded mo- 
ment, a cloud of contempt arises in my soul, it 
is at the aspect of this gratuitous self-degrada- 
tion, for which even ignorance and error can 
hardly serve as an excuse. 

See there your master and prophet, prostrating 
himself before the Slave Power — in the dust, be- 
fore your proud opponents ! You can no longer 
say you stand by him, for since that day he does 
not stand up himself. If you are with him still 
ihere, at the foot of the Slave Power, where he 
lies, you lie with him. And what did the Slave- 
holders do after he had so meanly humiliated 
himself, and prostrated his friends 1 Did they 
smile upon him '? Aye, they did, with scorn, 
and said, " AVe loved thy treason well enough, 
'•' but we spurn with contempt the traitor ;" and 
there he lies still. 

The time of the Baltimore Convention arrived, 
and the struggle recommenced. It became at 
once manifest that Douglas's nomination could 
not be forced upon the Democratic party without 
splitting that organization in twain ; and he saw 
clearly enough that then his election would be 
an impossibility. The South was seceding en 
masse, and leaving the rump Convention to do as 
it pleased. Then Mr. Douglas, seeing a disgrace- 
ful defeat inevitable, wrote a letter to his friends 
in the Convention, requesting them to withdraw 
his name if they found it in any way consistent 
to do so. And I declare, if Douglas Avas ever 
honest in anything he did or said, I believe he 
was honest then and there. 

But now the moment had arrived when it be- 
came manifest that there is justice in history. 
Douglas's position was disgusting, but his pun- 
ishment was sublime. Then his fdends, for the 
first time, refused to obey his commaiKl. Those 
whom he had used so often and so long for his 
own advancement saw now there was a last 
chance of using him for theirs. They said to him. 
*' We have performed our part of the contract; 
" now you have to perform yours. We have nom- 
" inated you for the Presidency ; now you have 
" to permit us to be elected Congressmen, Sher- 
" ifFs, County Clerks, or Constables, on the 
" strength of your name. There is no backing 
" out. Ho ! for the spoils !" 

" Dost thou think because thou hast suddenly become 
virtuous, 
There shall be no more cakes and ale ? 
Yes, by Saint Ann ! an' ginger-hot in the mouth, too !" 

[Prolonged laughter.] 

And so the saddle of the rump nomination is 
put upon his back, and the whole ghastly pack 
of office-hunters jump upon it. The spurs are 
put to the flanks — the whip applied to the back 
of the panting, bleeding jade, and so the speetral 



ride goes, east and west, night and day — and 
may the steed go to perdition, if only the riders 
reach their goal. [Loud applause and cheers.] 

Oh, there is justice in history. He has at last 
the idol of his dreams — the object of his fondest 
wishes — for which he has laid so many a treach- 
erous scheme — for which he has turned so many 
a summersault — for which he has struck so many 
a blow at the peace of the Republic — for which 
he so often prostituted himself and his followers 
— for which he has hugged so many a loafer, and 
insulted so many an honest man — for which he 
made every rum-shop his headquarters, and every 
ruffian his friend : — he has at last the nomination 
for the Presidency ; but what he has craved as a 
blessing, has come down upon him as a curse. 
To be nominated, and know that an election is 
impossible ! To be voted for, and to know that 
every vote for him is for Breckinridge or Lane, 
whom he hates, and every vote against him a vote 
for Lincoln, whom he does not love ! To be voted 
for, and be aware that those who vote for him 
work not for him, but for themselves ! To be dead, 
and yet living enough to be conscious of death ! 
Oh, there is justice in history ! Am I exaggera- 
ting ? Where is that mighty leader, whose voice 
once called millions into the field 1 At the street 
corners and cross-roads you see him standing like 
a blind, downfallen Belisarius — not in virtue, but 
in poverty — a bevy of political harlots surround- 
ing him, and begging for the miserable obolus of 
a vote; begging the Know-Nothings, whom he 
once alFectea to despise ; begging the Whigs, 
whom he once insulted with his brawling denun- 
ciations ; invoking the spirit of Henry Clay, whom 
he once called a black-hearted traitor ! Oh, but 
poor Belisarius ! The party harlots that surround 
him with their clamorous, begging cry, steal eve- 
ry vote they receive for him, and put it into their 
own pockets. 

Where is the bold, powerful agitator, whose 
voice sounded so defiantly on every contested 
field 1 Behold him on his sentimental journey, 
vainly trying to find his mother's home and his 
father's grave, apologising with squeamish affec- 
tation for his uncalled-for and indecent appear- 
ance in public, like one of the condemned spirits 
you read of in the myths of by-gone ages, rest- 
lessly perambulating the world, condemned to a 
more terrible punishment than Tantalus, who 
was tortured by an unearthly thirst, with grapes 
and water within his reach — more terrible than 
that of Dannites, who had to pour water into 
the leaky cask — for he is condemned to deliver 
that old speech of his over and over again. 
[Applause and cheers and laughter.] As often 
as he arrives at a hotel that has a balcony, as 
often as his hasty journey is arrested by a spon- 
taneous gatherin*g,when you hear a subterranean 
spectral voice cry out " ray great principle of 
non-intervention" — that is the dead squatter 
sovereign atoning for the evil deeds he commit- 
ted in his bodily existence. [Prolonged laughter 
and cheers.] Not long ago he haunted the rail- 
road crossings and clam-bakes of New England; 
then the cross-roads of the South, and the ghastly 
apparition was last seen in this neighborhood. 
[Prolonged laughter and cheers.] Where is that 
formidable party tyrant whose wishes once were 
commands ; who broke down sacred compromises 
with a mere stroke of his finger ; whose very nod 
made the heads of those who displeased him fly 
into the basket ; whose very whims were tests of 
Demooraey 1 Where is he who once, like Mao- 



16 



beth, thought himself invulnerable by any man 
" who was of woman born;" invincible, great, 

" Till Birnam wood 

Do hie to Dunsinane hill, 
Should come against him." 

Like Macbeth, he has believed the fiends 
" That paltered with him in a double sense," 
and there he stands, tied to the stake of his 
nomination. 

" He cannot fly, 
And, bear like, he must fight his course." 

But as Birnam Wood marched to Dunsinane, 
so the very fence rails of Illinois are rushing 
down upon him [tremendous laughter and 
cheers], and, like Macduff", there rises against 
the spirit of Free Labor, one whose children he 
has murdered, and that is a Champion "not of 
woman born." [Laughter.] And now 

" On, Macduff ; 
And damned be he who first cries hold— enough." 

[Renewed laughter, and cheers.] Oh, there is 
iustice in history. [Cheers.] 

The same betrayal of the Free Labor cause — 
the Nebraska bill, which was to be his stepping 
stone to power, proved to be the abyss which 
engulfed his honor, his manhood, his strength 
and his hopes. There are those who mean to re- 
verse the judgment of history. Vain under- 
taking ! That man is marked by the hand of 
eternal retribution. On his very front stands the 
fatal touch. Do not attempt to arrest the hand 
of Supreme Justice. You cannot save him from 
his ruin. Why are you so eager to share his 
disgrace 1 Leaders of the Douglas Democracy, 
■what means your empty bravado of strength 7 
You cannot deceive others ; why are you work- 
ing so hard to deceive yourselves ? You know 
that your orators are but endeavoring to galvan- 
ize a dead body into artificial life. You are well 
aware that your mass-meeting demonstrations 
are nothing but huge galvanic batteries at play. 
What means your desperate attempt to glue your 
broken fortunes together with those of other 
parties 1 Do you think this is the way to cheat 
destiny out of its dues 1 Is it your ambition to 
have your descendants read in the history of our 
days, there were men living in 18G0 that with in- 
stincts so depraved that when they could not 
accomplish that which was evil, they endeavored 
at least, to prevent that which was good 1 

And you who are warned by this sacred 
voice of conscience that you are doing wrong 
in adhering to Douglas, and yet obey the com- 
mand of party, hear me : is this party drill 
a discipline so omnipotent an idol that you would 
sacrifice upon its altar your independence, 
your manhood and all that constitutes your 
moral worth ? 

And you who claim the exclusive privilege of 
swearing by the Constitution and the laws, will 
you stamp the evidences of hypocrisy upon your 
brow by indirectly indorsing him who has done 
more than any other living man to undermine 
the Constitution and pervert the laws ? Will you 
permit your political hucksters to barter away 
not only your votes, but your consciences and 
your honor. 

But let the conspirators come on: we defy 
them. Go on with your coalitions, which are 



made the distinct understanding that those who 
unite to-day are to cbent each other to-morrow. 
Has it become a ruling principle in your parties 
that the "rank and file have no rights which the 
" leaders are bound to respect?" You will find 
out your mistake. Look around you. Do you 
see thousands leaving your banners, unwilling to 
submit to your treacherous schemes, to rob the 
people of their elections. Do you know what 
that means ? It means that the man rises above 
the partisan. It means the revival of conscience 
in our politics. It is the true sovereignty of the 
people vindicating itself [Cheers.] 

Now, build up your mole-hills, and call them 
impregnable fortresses. It seems you do not 
know how small they are. The logic of things 
will not roll its massive will over them. Your 
puny contrivances will leave no trace .behind to 
tell your doleful story. 

Sir, only those whose hearts are unmoved by 
great moral impulses can fail to see that we are 
in the midst of a great moral revolution. They 
cannot prevent final victory. I firmly believe 
they cannot retard it. No, they are aiding it in 
spite of themselves ; for their general rottenness 
demonstrates its necessity. Douglas himself 
is powerfully promoting its progress. He has 
taught the people of America a great, sublime 
lesson. 

I think it was Senator Pugh who once said 
that if Douglas were struck down by the South, 
he would take his bleeding corpse and show it to 
the youth of the North-West as an example 
of Southern gratitude. Let that modern Mark 
Antony come in with his dead Caesar (pardon 
me, it is neither Csesar dead nor Mark Antony 
living), let him bring in his bleeding corpse, and 
I would suggest the funeral oration. Let him 
say to the youth of the American Republic: 
" This is Douslas. Look at him. For every 
*' wound the South inflicted upon him, he has 
" struck a blow at the liberties of his country- 
" men. Let him serve as a warning example that 
"a man may be a traitor to liberty, and yet not 
*' become a favorite of the Slave Power. Mark 
" him. By false Popular Sovereignty he tried to 
"elevate himself; a true Popular Sovereignty 
" strikes him down." [Loud applause.] 

If the youth of America profit by this lesson, 
then it may be said that even Douglas has done 
some service to his country. [Laughter.] Then 
peace be with him — his mission is fulfilled. 

But now we have to fulfill ours. False Popular 
Sovereignty is down. Freemen, it is for you to see 
to it, that true Popular Sovereignty triumph. 

Citizens of New York, when after the adjourn- 
ment of the Convention which nominated that 
great and good man Abraham Lincoln for the 
Presidency, I addressed the people of my State 
again for the first time, I said to them : " Let 
" Wisconsin stretch her hand across the great 
" lakes and grasp the hand of New York. Let 
"it be known that New York and Wisconsin, 
" who stood together to the last for Seward in 
"the Convention, will stand first and foremost in 
" the battle for Lincoln and Liberty." Wisconsin 
will redeem her pledge on the 6th of November. 
Men of New York we look to you for a respon.sc, 
[Prolonged cheering.] 



EVENING JOUBNAL TKiCTS, Ho. 17. 



POLITIOiLr. RECORD 



OF 



STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS 



ON" J UK 



SLAYERY QUESTION. 



A Tract issued by the Illinois Republican State Central Committee. 



THIRD EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. 



C0T5TENTS : 

Part I ANTI-SLAVERY. I Part II PRO-SLAVERY. I Part III MISCELLANEOUS. 



PART I— ANTI-SLAVERY. 



MR. DOUGLAS ElfDEAVORS TO PROHIBIT SLAVERY 
IN " STATES." 

On the 25lh day of January, 1845, the Hon. 
Stephen A. Douglas, a member of the House of 
Representatives from Illinois, introduced the fol- 
lowing amendment to the joint resolution for the 
annexation of Texas, which had been presented 
by Mr. Brown, of Tennessee : 

" And in such States as may be formed out of said 
territory north of the Missouri Compromise line, sla- 
very or involuntary servitude— except for crime— shall 
be prohibited." 

The record of this action is found in the Con- 
gressional Globe, vol. XIV., (2d session, 28th 
Congress.) page 193. The amendment became a 
part of the law for annexing Texas, and will be 
found on page 798 of the U. S. Statutes at Large, 
for 1836—1845. Let it be observed, that while 
Thomas Jefferson and the fathers of the Repub- 
lic proposed to prohibit slavery in Territories 
only, and while the Republican party of to-day 
propose no more and no less, Stephen A. Douglas 
sought in 1845, to prohibit it in States, even 
though the people wanted it ! 



HE DISTINCTLY ASSERTS THE RIGHT OF CONGRESS 
TO GOVERN THE TERRITORIES. 

On the 23d of February, 1845, Mr. Douglas 
made a speech in the House of Representatives, 
on the bills for the admission of Iowa and Flori- 
da into the Union. In this speech he said : 

•' The father may bind his son during his minority, 
but the moment he attainsj his majority his fetters are 
severed, and he is free to regulate his own conduct. 
SO WITH THE TERRITOEIES ; THEY ARE SUB- 
JECT TO THE JURISDICTION AND CONTROL 
OF CONGRESS DURING THEIR INFANCY— THEIR 
MINORITY; but when they attain their majority 



AND OBTAIN ADMISSION INTO THE UNION, 
they are free from all restraints and restrictions, ex- 
cept such as the Constitution of the United States has 
imposed upon each and all of the States."— Cong'. 
Globe, vol. 14, page 284. 

HE REGARDS THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE AS A 
" SACRED THING." 

On the 23d of October, 1849, Mr, Douglas 
made a speech at Springfield, Illinois, which was 
published in the State Register, of November 
8th, in which he used the following remarkable 
language : 

" The Missouri Compromise has an origin akin to 
that of the Constitution of the United States, con- 
ceived in the same spirit of fraternal affection, and 
calculated to remove forever the danger which seemed 
to threaten, at some distant day, to sever the social 
bond of union. All the evidences of public opinion, at 
that day, seemed to indicate that this Compromise had 
became canonized in the hearts of the American peo- 
ple as a sacred thing, which no ruthless hand would 
ever be reckless enough to disturb." 



HE AWARDS THE GLORY OF THE MISSOURI COM- 
PROMISE TO HENRY CLAY. 

In the same speech, and in the same context, 
he continued as follows : 

" The Missouri Compromise had then been in prac- 
tical operation for about a quarter of a century, and 
had received the sanction and approbation of men of 
all parties, in every section of the Union. It had 
allayed all sectional jealousies and irritations, grow- 
ing out of this vexed question, and harmonized and 
tranquilized the whole country. It had given to Henry 
Clay, as its prominent champion, the proud sobriquet 
of the ' Great Pacificator,^ and by that title, and for 
that service, his political friends had repeatedly ap- 
pealed to the people to rally under his standard, as a 
presidential candidate, as the man who had exhibited 
the patriotism, and the power to suppress an unholy 
and. treasonable agitation, and preserve .the Union. 
He (Mr. Douglas) was not aware that any man or any 
party, from any section of the Union, had ever urged, 



OR Sale at the Office of the Albany Evening Journal. Price, per Single Copy, 2c.; 
PER Dozen Copies, 20c. ; per Hundred, |1; per Thousand, |8. 



as an objection to Mr. Clay, that he was a Great Cham- 
pion of the Missouri Compromise- On the contrary, 
the effort was made hy the opponents of Mr. Clay to 
prove tliat he was not entitled to the exclusive merit 
of that great patriotic measure, and that the honor was 
equally due to othei's as well as him, for securing its 
adoption. 

" He (Mr. Douglas) in connection with the entire 
delegation from Illinois, and accoi-ding to his recollec- 
tion, in company with nearly all the members from the 
Tsurthern States, and some forty odd members from 
t!ie Slave States, voted for the Oregon bill, containing 
;i prohibition of slavery in that Territory, leaving the 
p.'ople to regulate their own domestic institutions 
iinder the Constitution ichen they should become a Slate. 
This triumphant vote, uniting both Northern and 
Southern members in favor of the Oregon bill, was a 
matter of no practical importance so tar as the exist- 
once of the insti.tution of slavery in that country was 
concerned, and is only referred to now, for the purpose 
of showing that at that day, the Constitutional right 
of Congress to legislate upon the subject of slavery 
in the Territories, was not virtually resisted, if, 

INDEED, IT V.'AS SEKIOUSLT QUESTIONED." 



HE BELIEVES IT IS NOT UNJUST TO THE SOUTH TO 
EXCLUDE SLAVERY. 

On the 13tli day of March, 1850, Mr. Douglas 
made a speech in the Senate, defending the " sa- 
cred thing," from which the following is an ave- 
rage extract : 

"The next in the series of aggressions complained 
of by the Senator from South Carolina, is the Missouri 
Compromise. The Missouri Compromise an act of 
Northern Injustice, designed to deprive the South other 
due share of the Territories ! Why, sir, it was only on 
tiiis very day that the Senator from Mississippi" de- 
spaired of any peaceable adjustment of existing difti- 
culties, because the Missouri Compromise line coitld 
not be extended to the Pacific. That measitre was 
originally adopted in the bill for the admission of Mis- 
souri, by the union of Northern and Southern votes. 
The South has always professed to be willing to abide 
by it, and even to continue it, as a fair and honorable 
adjustment of a vexed and dilficult question. In 1845, 
it was adopted in the resolutions for the annexation 
of Texas, by Southern as well as Northern votes, with- 
out the slightest complaint that it was unfair to any 
section of the country. In 1846, it received the support 
of every Southern member of the House of Represent- 
atives—Whig and Democrat— without exception, as an 
alternative measure to the Wilmot Proviso. And again 
in 1848, as an amendment to the Oregon bill, on my mo- 
tion, it received the vote, if I recollect ri^ht— and I do 
not think that I can possibly be mistaken— of every 
Southern Senator, Whig and Democrat, even including 
the Senator from South Carolina himself [Mr. Cal- 
houn]. And yet we are now told that this is only se- 
cond to the Ordinance of 1787 in the series of aggres- 
sions on the South."— t'an(7. Globe, Appendix, vol. 22, 
part l,page 370. 

" The Territories belong to the United States as one 
people, one nation, and are to be disposed of for the 
common benefit of all, according to the principles of 
the Constitution. Each State, as a member of the Con- 
federacy, has a right to a voice in forming the rules and 
regulations for the government of the Territories ; but 
the different sections — North, South, East and West — 
have no such right. It is no violation op Southern 
KiQHTS to prohibit Slavekt."— Congr. Globe, Ajjpen- 
diXy vol. 22, part 1, page 369. 



HB ADVOCATES THE " IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT " 
AND THE ULTIMATE EXTINCTION OF SLAVERY! 

On the same day, and in the same speech, Mr. 
Douglas continued in the following surprising 
strain — surprising, if we reflect in whose mouth 
the sentiments are found : 

" I have already had occasion to remark, that, at the 
time of the adoption of the Constitution, there were 
twelve (slave States), and six of them have since abo- 
lished slavery. This fact shows that the cause of free- 
dom has steadily and flrmly advanced, while slavery 
has receded in the same ratio. We all loolr forward 
with confidence to the time when Delaware, Maryland, 
Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, and probably 'North 
Carolina and Tennessee, will adopt one gradual system 

g^ emancipation, under the operation of which, those 
tates must, in process of time, become free." 



And again, on the same page, speaking of a 
proposition to amend the Constitution so as to 
preserve an " equilibrium," in point of numbers, 
between free and slave States, he says : 

" Then, sir, the proposition of the Senator from South 
Carolina is entirely impracticable. It is also inadmis- 
sible, if practicable. It would revolutionize the fun- 
damental principle of the Government. It would de- 
stroy the great principle of popular equality which 
must necessarily form the basis of all free institutions. 
It would be a retrograde movement, in an age of pro- 
gress, that would astonish the ivorld.'" — Gang. Globe, 
Appendix, vol. 22, part 1, page 371. 



HE BELIEVES THAT CONGRESS MAY RIGHTFULLY 
EXCLUDE SLAVES, BANKS, OR ARDENT SPIRITS 
FROM THE TERRITORIES. 

On the 13th of March, 1850, in the speech al- 
ready quoted from, Mr, Douglas distinctly assert- 
ed the right of Congress to prohibit the introduc- 
tion of certain species of property in the Terri- 
tories, as being " unwise, immoral, and contrary 
to the principles of sound public policy," among 
which he enumerated property in slaves. He 
said : 

"But you say that we propose to prohibit by law 
your emigrating to the Territories with your property. 
We propose no such thing. We recognize your right, 
in common with our own, to emigrate to the Territo- 
ries with vour property, and there to hold and enjoy it 
in subordination to the laws you may find in force in 
the country. These laws, in some respects, differ from 
our own, as the laws of the various States of this Union 
vary, on some points, from the laws of each other. 
Some species of pi^ope^^ty are excluded by law in most of 
the States, as well as Territories, as being vmvise, im- 
moral, OR CONTRARY TO THE PRINCIPLES OP 
SOUND PUBLIC POLICY. For instance, the banker 
is prohibited from emigrating to Minnesota, Oregon or 
California with his bank. The bank may be property 
by the laws of New York, but ceases to be so when ta- 
ken into a State or Territoiy where banking is prohi- 
bited bv the local law. So, ardent spirits, whiskey, 
brandy.' and all the intoxicating drinks, are recognized 
and considered as property in most of the States, if not 
all of them ; but no citizen, whether from the North or 
South, can take this species of property with him, and 
hold, sell or use at his pleasure, in all the Tei-ritories, 
because it is prohibited by the local law— in Oregon by 
the statutes of the Territory, and in the Indian country 
by the acts of Congress. NOR CAN A MAN GO 
THERE AND TAIvl AND HOLD HIS SLAVE, FOR 
THE SAME REASON. These laws, and many others 
involving similar principles, are directed against no 
section, AND IMPAIR THE RIGHTS OF NO STATE 
OP THE UNION. They are laws against the intro- 
duction, sale and use of specific kinds of property, 
whether brought from the North or the South, or from 
foreign countries."— Cong. Globe, Appendix, vol. 22, 
part 1, page 371. 

And again : 

" But, sir, I do not hold the doctrine, that, to exclude 
any species of property, by law, from any Territory, is 
a violation of any right to property. Do you not ex- 
clude banks from most of the Territories ? Do you not 
exclude whiskey from being introduced into large por- 
tions of the territory of the United States ? Do you 
not exclude gambling tables, which are properly recog- 
nized as such in the States where they are tolerated ? 
And has any one contended that the exclusion of gam- 
bling tables, and the exclusion of ardent spirits, Avas a 
violation of any constitutional privilege or right ? And 
yet it is the case in a large portion of the territory of the 
United States ; but there is no outcry against that, be- 
cause it is the prohibition of a specific kind of property, 
and not a prohibition against any section of the Union. 
Why sir our laws now prevent a tavern-keeper from 
going into some of the terri^^ories of the United States 
and taking a bar with him, and using and selling spirits 
there The law also prohibits certain other descrip- 
tions of business from being carried on in the Territo- 
ries. I am not, therefore, prepared to say that, under 
the Constitution, we have not the power to pass laws ex- 
eluding Negro Slavery from the Territories. It involves 
THE SAME PRINCIPLES."- /Speec/i of Senator Douglas, 
June 3, 1850, pages 1115 and 1116, vol. 21, Cong. Globe, 
1849-50. 



3 



HE BELIEVES IT IS CONSTITUTIOXAL TO PROHIBIT 
SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES. 

On the same day, and in the same speecli, Mr. 
Douglas referred to the Wilmot Proviso resolu- 
tions, passed hy the Illinois Legislature., thus : 

" My bauds are tied upon one Isolated point. 

" A Senator — Can you not break loose ? 

"Mr. DovaiuAS—l' have no desire to break loose. 
My opinions are my own, and I express them freely. 
My votes belong to those who sent me here, and to 
whom I am responsible. I have never differed with my 
constituency during seven years' service in Congress, 
except upon one solitai'v question. AND EVEN ON 
THAT I HAVE NO CONSTITUTIONAL DIFFICUL- 
TIES, and have previously twice given the same vote, 
under peculiar circumstances, whicli Is now required 
at my hands. I have no desire, therefore, to break loose 
frovi the instruction.'''' --\_Cong. Globe, Ai^pendix, vol. 22, 
vart 1, page 373.] 



of the paper containing Mr. Douglas' speech of 
Oct. 2od, 1849, wei-e quite mysleriously nuiti- 
lated or destroyed in 1854, after the repeal of the 
Missouri Compromise. 



THE RESOLUTIONS OP THE ILLINOIS LEGISLATURE. 

This is perhaps an appropriate place to in- 
troduce the Wilmot Proviso resolutions of the 
Illinois Legislature of 1849. They were adopted 
by the Senate on the 8th of January, in that 
yeai-, and in the House on the 9th, in the follow- 
ing words : 

Resolved by the Senate of the State of Illinois, the 
House of Representatives concurring. That our Sen- 
ators in Congress be instructed, and our Representa- 
tives requested, to use all honorable means in their 
power to procure the enactment of such laws by Con- 
gress for the government of the countries and territo- 
ries of the United States acquired by tlie treaty of 
peace, friendship, limits and settlement with the Ee- 
public of Mexico, concluded February Sd, 1848, as 
shall contain the express declaration ' that there shall 
be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in said ter- 
ritories, otherwise thau in the punishment of crimes 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.' 

" Resrjlved by the House of Representatives, the Senate 
concurring herein. That the Governor be respectfully 
requested to transmit to each of om* Senators and Re- 
presentatives in Congress a copy of the joint resolu- 
tion of the Senate, concurred in by the House on the 
9th inst., for the exclusion of slavery from the new ter- 
ritories acquired by our late treaty with the Republic 
of Mexico." 



MR. DOUGLAS RESPONDS TO THE RESOLUTIONS. 

On the 23d of October, 1849, Mr. Douglas 
made a S])eech in Springfield, 111. (referred to 
above), which was published in the State Regis- 
ter^ of Nov. 8th, 1849. In this speech he re- 
ferred to the resolutions of instructions passed 
by the Legislature, in tlie following language : 

'* In August, MS, he (Mr. Douglas) had voted for the 
Oregon bill, containing a clause prohibiting slavery in 
that Territory. About four months afterwards, the 
Legislature assembled and prepared a resolution in- 
structing our Senators, and requesting our Representa- 
tives in Congress to vote for territorial bills in Califor- 
nia and New Mexico, containing a prohibition of 
slavery in those Territories. In other words, they in- 
structed him to do prec'isely what lie had just done with- 
out instructions. He had been informed that his Whig 
friends, and perhaps a few others, peculiarly situated, 
confidently expected him to resign, rather than obey 
those instructions. It would be disagreeable to disap- 
point them in so reasonable an expectation. It was a 
serious question, however, requiring grave and delibe- 
rate consideration, whether he could conscientiously 
do under instructions what he had just done from 

THE dictates OF HIS JUDGMENT WITHOCT INSTRUC- 
TIONS, As the decision of so important a question re- 
qaires time to consider, he invited them to wait and 
, see." 

If it be denied that Mr. Douglas ever uttered 
these "Abolition " sentiments, a copy of the Re- 
gister containing them, may be found on file, in 
one of the public offices at Springfield, another 
at Jacksonville, and perhaps others in other parts 
of the State, though it is true that several filfij? 



HE THOUGHT THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE SHOULD 
HAVE BEEN EXTENDED TO THE PACIFIC. 

The bill for the admission of California being 
under debate, Mr. Turney (of Tenn), moved to 
amend the same by extending the Mi.ssouri Com- 
promise line to the Pacific Ocean, saying his 
amendment was a verbatim copy of Douglas' 
amendment to the Oregon Bill. Mr. Douglas, 
on the 6th day of August, 1850, said : 

"As reference has been made to me as the author of 
a similar amendment, in 1S48. to the Oregon Bill, I de- 
sire only to state that I was then willing to adjust the 
whole slavery question on that line and those terms ; 
and if the lohole acquired territm^y teas now in the same 
condition as it was then, I WOULD NOW VOTE 
FOR IT, AND SHOULD BE GLAD TO SEE IT 
ADOPTED. But since then California has increased 
her population, has a State government organized, aad 
I cannot consent, for one, to destroy that State govern- 
ment and send all back, or that such a line as this 
sliall form her southern boundary. For that reason, 
AND THAT ALONE, I shall vote against the amend- 
ment."— [Cono'. Globe, Appendix, vol. 22, part 2, page 
1510. 



HE SAYS THE PEOPLE OP THE NORTHWEST WERE 
CONSCIENTIOUSLY OPPOSED TO SLAVERY. 

In his speech in tlie Senate, on the 13th of 
March, 1850 (already quoted from), Mr. Douglas 
took occasion to vindicate the conscientious feel- 
ings of the people of Illinois and the other North- 
western States oil the subject of slavery, as fol- 
lows : 

" I undertake to say that there is not one of these 
States that would have tolerated the institution of 
slavery in its limits, even if it had been peremptorily 
required to do so by act of Congress. It is a libel on 
the character of these people, to say that the HONEST 
SENTIMENTS OF THEIR HEARTS were smothered, 
and their political action upon this question con- 
strained and directed by act of Congress. Will the 
Senators from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin 
and Iowa make any such DEGRADING ADMISSION 
in respect to their constituencies? I WILL NEVER 
BLACKEN THE CHARACTER OF MY OWN STATE 
BY SUCH AN ADMISSION, and I know the character 
of my colleague too well to harbor the thought that he 
will allow it to be said of her with impunity. "—[6'orag'. 
Globe, Append'ix, vol. 22, j)CiTt 1, page 370.] 

Let the reader contrast this fine assertion of 
the conscientious convictions of the peofjle of 
Illinois, with the horrible libel upon them con- 
tained in his speech of February 29th, 1860 (on 
page 12 of this tract), and see how he has kept 
his promise, "never to blacken the character of 
his own State by such an admission." 



HE BELIEVES IN THE HIGHER LAW. 

In his Chicago speecli of Octob'^r 2.3d, 1850, 
in defense of the Fugitive Slave Law, Mr. Doug- 
las said : 

" The general proposition that there is a law PARA- 
MOUNT TO ALL HUMAN ENACTMENTS— the law 
of the Supreme Ruler ofthe Universe— I TRUST THAT 
NO CIVILIZED AND CHRISTIAN PEOPLE IS PRE- 
PARliD TO QUESTION, MUCH LESS DENY. We 
should recognize, respect and revere the Divine law." 
—Sheaharos Life of Douglas, page 184. 

It is true that Mr. Douglas went on to argue 
that the Divine law does not prescribe the forms 
of human , government, but all his subsequent 
logic is not a match for the plain, unequivocal 
statement here given that " there is a law para- 
mount to .all human euaetments ' " 



SLAVERY IN NEW MEXICO. 

For the purpose of contrasting the views 
uttered by Mr. Douglas in the Senate, on the 
12th day of February, 1850, on the subject of 
slavery in the territory of New Mexico, with liis 
remarks on the 16th of May, lc60, (hereafter 
quoted,) we copy the following from the Con- 
gressional Glohe, vol. 22, part 1, page 343 : 

"Mr. Douglas — If the question is controverted 
here, I am ready to enter into the discussion of that 
question at any time, upon a reasonable notice, and to 
sliow that, bj' the constituted authority and constitu- 
tional authority of Mexico, slavery was prohibited in 
New Mexico at the time of the acquisition, and that 
prohibition was acquired by us with the soil, and that, 
when we acquired the territory, we acquired it with 
that attached to it— that covenant running with the soil 
— and that luust continue, unless removed by compe- 
tent authority. And because there was a prohibition 
thus attached, to the soil, I have always thought it was 
an unwise, unnecessary, and unjustifiable course on the 
part of the people of the free States to require Con- 
gress to put another prohibition on the top of that one. 
It has been the strongest argument that I have ever urged 
against the prohibition oj slaveiy in the Territories, 
that it xoas not necessary for the accomplishment of that 
object.'''' 



THE THREE NEBRASKA BILLS. 

No. 1. 
On the 17th day of February, A. D. 1853, 
Senator Douglas, as Chairman of the Committee 
on Territories, reported to the Senate his first 
" Act to Organize the Territory of Nebraska." 
This act contained no repeal of the Missouii 
Compromise, and it failed to become a law for 
want of time. Senator Atchison, of Missouri, on 
the 3d day of March, 1853, made some remarks 
on this bill, in which he acknowledged that he 
had no hope of ever seeing the Missouri Compro- 
mise repealed. He said : 

"I had two objeetions to this bill. One was, that 
the Indian title to that territory had not been extin- 

fuished, or, at .east, but a very small portion of it had 
een. Another was, the Missouri Compromise, or, as 
it is commonly called, the Slavery Kestriction. It was 
my opinion at that time.— and I am not now very clear 
on that subjecv, — that the law of Congress, when the 
State of Missouri was admitted into the Union, exclu- 
ding slavery from the territory of Louisiana north of 
36 deg. 30 min., would be enforced in that territory un- 
less it was specially rescinded ; and whether that law 
was in accordance with the Constitution of the United 
States or not, it would do its work, and that work 
would be to preclude slaveholders from going into that 
territory. But Avhen I came to look into that question, 
I found that there ivas no prospect, no hope, of a repeal 
of the Missouri Comjyromise, excluding slavery from that 
Territory. Now, sir, I am free to admit that, at this 
moment, at this hour, and for all time to come, I should 
oppose the organization or the settlement of that 
Territory, iniless my constituents and the constituents 
of the whole South, of the slave States of the Union, 
could go into it upon the same footing, with equal 
rights and equal privileges, carrying that species of 
propei'ty with them as other people of this Union. Yes, 
sir, I acknowledges that that would have governed me ; 
but I have no hope that the restriction will ever be re- 
pealed. 

"I have always been of opinion that the first great 
error committed, in the political history of this coun- 
try, was the Ordinance of 1787, rendering the North- 
west Territory free territory. The next great error 
was the Missouri Compromise. But they are both irre- 
mediable. There is no remedy for them. We must sub- 
mit to them. lam x>repared to do it. It is evident 

THAT THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE CANNOT BE REPEALED. 

So far as that question is concei'ned, we might as well 
agree to the admission of this Territory now as next 
year, or five or ten years hence."— Corep'. Qlobe, Session 
1852-53, page 1113. 

No. 2. 

On the 4th day of January, 1854, Mr. Douglas, 



as Chairman of the Committee on Territories, 
reported to the Senate his second bill for the or- 
ganization of Nebraska. The bill was accom- 
panied by a report, from which the following is 
an extract : 

"Your Committee do not feel themselves called upon 
to enter into the discussionof these controverted ques- 
tions. They involve the same grave issues which pro- 
duced the agitation, the sectional strife, and the fearful 
struggle of 18.50. As Congress deemed it wise and pru- 
dent to refrain from deciding the matters in contro- 
versy then, either by affirming or repealing the Mexi- 
can laws, or by an act declaratory of the true intent of 
the Constitution, and the extent of the protection af- 
forded by it to slave propertv in the Territories, so 
YOUE COMMITTEE ARE NOT PBEPAEED NOW 
TO BE COMMEND A DEPARTURE from the course 
pursued on that memorable occasion, EITHER BY 
AFFIRMING OR REPEALING THE EIGHTH 
SECTION OF THE MISSOURI ACT. or by any act 
declaratory of the meaning of the Constitution in re- 
spect to the legal points of dispute." 

Senator Dixon, of Kentucky, immediately 
introduced an amendment to the bill_ declaring 
the Missouri Compromise null and void. Sena- 
tor Atcliison, of Missouri, then the presiding 
officer of the Senate, threatened Mr. Douglas with 
a displacement from his position as Chan-man of 
the Committee on Territories unless he should 
accept Mr. Dixon's amendment. Mr. Atchison 
tells the whole story in a speech delivered at 
Atchison City, Kansas, on the 10th day of Sep- 
tember, 1854, reported as follows in the Parkville 
Luminary : 

" fTe [Atchison] thought the Missouri Compromise 
ought to be repealed; he had pledged himself in his 
public addresses to vote for no territorial organization 
that would not virtually annul it ; and with this feeling 
in his heart, he desired to be the Chairman of the Sen- 
ate Committee on Territories when a bill was imtro- 
duced. 

•' With this object in view, he had a private interview 
Avith Mr. Douglas, and informed him of what he desiied 
—the introduction of a bill for Nebraska like what he 
had promised to vote for, and that he would like to be 
Chairman of the Committee on Territories, in order to 
introduce such a measure ; and if he could get that po- 
sition, he would immediately resign as President of 
the Senate. Judge Douglas requested twenty-four 
hours to consider the matter, and if, at the expiration 
of that time, he could not introduce such a bill as he 
[]\Ir. Atchison] proposed, which would, at the same 
time, accord with his own sense of justice to the South, 
he would resign as Chairman of the Territorial Com- 
mittee, in Democratic caucus, and exert his influence 
to get him [Atchison] appointed. At the expiration 
of the given time. Senator Douglas signified his inten- 
tion to introduce such a bill as had been spoken of.' 

No. 3 

Whether Atcliison told the truth or not, it is a 
fact that, on the 23d day of January, 1854, nine- 
teen days after he was " not prepared to recom- 
mend a departure" from the Missouri prohibi- 
tion, Mr. Douglas brought in a new bill, dividing 
Nebraska into two Territories — Kansas and Ne- 
liraska — and repealing the Missouri Compromise 
in tlie following terms : 

"That the Constitution, and all the ]a\vs of tha 
United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall 
have the same force and efiect within the said Terri- 
tory of Nebraska (and Kansas) as elsewhere within the 
United States, except the eighth section of the act pre- 
paratory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, 
approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, 
which BEING INCONSISTENT WITH THE PEINCI- 
CIPLE OF NON-INTERVENTION BY CONGRESS 
WITH SLAVERY IN THE STATES AND TERRITO- 
RIES. AS RECOGNIZED BY THE LEGISLATION 
OF 1850, commonly called the Compromise Measures, 
is hereby declared inoperative and void." 



5 



PART II -PRO-SLAVEBY. 



The introduction of the third Nebraska bill, 
repealing" the Missouri Compromise, constitutes 
the turning point in Mr. Douglas' political high- 
way. From this sharp corner, his course is 
wholly and utterly pro-slavery, down to the in- 
troduction of the Lecompton bill in the Senate, 
where he takes a position of indifference, best 
expressed in his phrase, " Don't care wliether 
slavery is voted down or voted up." The indif- 
ferent mood is preserved a little more than two 
years, when, as will be seen by the record, he 
bccMmcs nio:e vv:a.thfully pro-.slavciy ihan ever 
before. 



Popular Sovereignty. 

The meaning of " Popular Sovereignity is now 
shown by Mr. Douglas himself to be this : That 
the people of a Territoiy shall not have the 
power of electing their own executive officers 
or judges, nor the right to make their own laws, 
except by a two-thirds vote, if the Federal Gover- 
nor shall disapprove them ; and that they shall 
not have the right to exclude slavery at all. It is 
further shown that under Popular Sovereignity 
" no such thing as sovereign power attaches to a 
Territory," and that the settlers upon all unor- 
ganized territory of the United States are to be 
treated as vagrants and rebels. In other words, 
that Popular Sovereignty means the right of the 
people of the Territories to be governed entirely 
by the President and the Supreme Couit. Let 
the reader give his attention to the following 
facts, taken from the record, and judge whether 
this is not a correct statement of " Popular Sov- 
ereignty; " 

POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY IN THE NEBRASKA BILL. 

The twelfth section of the Kansas-Nebraska 

Act says: 

"That the Governor, Secretary, Chief Justice, Asso- 
ciate Justices, Attorney and Marshal, shall he nomi- 
Eated, and, by and with the advice and consent of the 
Senate, appointed by the President of the United States. ' ' 

The sixth section of the same act says : 

" Every bill which shall have passed the Council and 
House of Representatives of said Territory, shall, be- 
fore it become a law, be presented to the Governor of 
the Territory ; if he approve he shall sign it, but if not 
he shall return it with his objections to the House in 
which it originated, who shall enter the objections, at 
large, on their journal, and proceed to re-consider it. 
If, after such re-consideration, two-thirds of that 
House shall agree to pass the bill, it shall be sent, to- 
gether with the objections, to the other House, by 
which it shall likewise be re-considered, and, if ap- 
proved by Two-THIEDS of that House, it shall become 
a law." 

The seventh section of the same act says : 

" The Governor shall nominate, and by and with the 
advice and consent of the legislative council, appoint 
all officers not Jierein otTierwise provided for ; and in the 
first instance the Governor alone may appoint all said 
officers who shall hold their offices until the end of the 
first session of the legislative assembly, and he shall 
lay ofi" the necessary districts for members of the 
council and House of Eepresentatives, and all other 
officers. " 

These extracts are introduced, not because 



there has ever been any dispute about the facts, 
but for the [>urpose of giving jury evidence of 
the proposition sought to be established concern- 
ing the '' true intent and meaning" of Popular 
Sovereignty. 



HE VOTES DOWN "POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY." 

The true intent and meaning of the Nebraska 
bill was declared to be " not to legislate slavery 
into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it 
itierefroni, l)Ut to leave the people perfectly free 
to form and regula'e their own domestic institu- 
Liohs in their own way. subject only to the Con- 
stitution of the United States." This was the 
" stump speech in the belly of the bill," as Mr. 
Benton justly characterized it. On the 15th of 
February, 1854, Senator Chase offered an amend- 
ment to the bill, in order to exclude slavery 
while in a Territorial condition, if they wanted 
to. The amendment was as follows : 

" Mr. Chase— I desire to submit an amendment— to 
insei't immediately after the words. ' subject to the 
Constitution of the United States,' the following: 

'• 'Under which tlie pe(jple of the Territor}', through 
their appropriate representatives, may, if they see lit, 
PROHIBIT THE EXISTENCE OP SLAVERY 
THEREIN.' ''—Cong. Globe, ISoi, part 1, jJage 421. 

After considerable discussion a vote was 
taken, on the 2d of March following, and the 
amendment was rejected by — yeas, 10, nays, 30 — 
DOUGLAS voting in the negative. Thus, it ap- 
peared that the peo])le were not left perfectly 
free to exclude s]?Lvevy , according to Mr. Douglas' 
understanding of his own bill. 



HE DOES IT AGAIN. 

On the 2d of July, 1856, Senator Trumbull 
offered the following amendment to the bill for 
the admission of Kansas, commonly known as 
the "Toombs Bill:" 

" And be it further enacted. That the provision of the 
Act to organize the Territories of Nebraska and Kan- 
sas." which declares it to be the ' true intent and mean- 
ing' of said act ' not to legislate slavery into any Terri- 
tory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to 
leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and re- 
gulate their domestic institutions in their own way, 
subject only to the Constitution of the United States,' 
was intended to and does confer upon or leave to the 
people of Kansas full power, at any time, through its 
Territorial Legislature, to exclude slavery from said 
Territory, or to recognize and regulate it therein.'" 

The vote stood — ^yeas 11, nays 34. DOUG- 
LAS voting in the negative. The amendment 
niay be found oii page 796, and the vote on page 
799 of the Appendix to the Congressional Globe, 
1855-6. 



HE SAYS IT IS A QUESTION FOR THE SUPREME 
COURT. 

On this occasion (to wit, on the 2d of July, 
1856), Mr. Douglas used the following language 
in discussing the amendment : 

"My opinion in regard to the question which my 
colleague is trying to raise here, has been well known to 
the Senate for years. It has been repeated over and 
over again. He tried, the other day, as those asso- 



ciated with him on the stump used to do two years ago 
and last j^ear, to ascertaiii what wei'e my opinions on 
this point in the Nebraska bill. I TOLD THEM IT 
WAS A JUDICIAL QUESTION. Mv answer then 
was, and now is. that IF THE (CONSTITUTION CAR- 
EIES SLAVERY THERE. LET IT GO. AND NO 
POWER ON EARTH CAN TAKE IT AWAY; but if 
the Constitution does nor carry it there, no power bnt 
the people can carry it there. Whatever maybe the 
true decision on that constitutional point, it would not 
have affected my vote tor or against the isebraska bill. 
I should have svpportedit as readily if I thought the de- 
cision would be one way as the other. If my colleague 
will examine my speeches, he will find that declaration. 
He will also find that I stated I would not discuss the 
LEGAL QUESTION, for that by the bill we referred 
it to the Courts.''— .-i^JiJrnc^KC to Cong. Globe, page "197. 

And again on the same day, in reply to Mr. 
Trumbull, lie said : 

" I say I am willing to leave it to the Supreme Court 
of the United States, because the Constitution intrusted 
it l\i&y:Q.— Appendix to Cong. Globe, 1855-6, page 197. 



WHAT THE SUPREME COURT DECIDED. 

Tins is the proper place to give the decision 
of the Supreme Court on tlie question of 
slavery in the Territories, and the right of Ter- 
ritorial Legislatures to exolude it. It will be 
found on pages 450 and 451, vol. 19. Howard's 
Reports (Dred Scott vs. John P, A. Sanford), 
where, after deciding tliat Congress had no 
power to prohibit .'slavery in a Territory, the 
Court proceeded as follows : 

"The powers over person and property of which we 
speak, are not ouly nor gi-anted to Congress, but are in 
express terms denied, and they are foi'bidden to exer- 
cise them. And this prohibition is not confined to the 
States, but the word;" are general, and extend to the 
whole territory over which the Constitution gives it 
power to legislate, including those portions of it re- 
maining xmder Territorial Government, as well as that 
covered by States. It is a total absence of power 
everywhere within the dominion of the United States, 
and places the citizens of a Territory, so far as these 
rights are concerned, on the same footing with citizens 
of the States, and guards them as firmly and plainly 
against any inroads which the General Government 
might attempt, under the plea of implied or inciden- 
tal powers. And- if Congress itself cannot do this— if 
it IS beyond the powers conferred on the Federal Gov- 
ernment — it ivili, be admitted, ive presume, that it could 
not atdhorize a Territorial Government to exercise them. 
It could confer -no power on any local government estab- 
lished by its authority, to violate the provisions of the 
Constitution. 

"It seems, however, to be supposed that there is a 
difference between property in a slave and other pro- 
perty, and that difterent rules may be applied to it in 
expounding the Constitution of the United States. 
And the laws and usages of nations, and the writings 
of eminent jurists upon the relation of master and 
slave, and their mutual rights and duties, and the pow- 
ers which governments may exercise over it, have been 
dwelt upon in the argument. 

"Bat in considering the question before us, it must 
be b(.>rne in mind that there is no law of nations stand- 
ing between the people of the United States and their 
government, and interfering with their relation to each 
other. The powers of the government, and the rights 
of the citizens under it, are positive and practical 
rognlations plainly written down. The people of the 
United States have delegated to it certain enumerated 
powers, and forbidden it to exercise others. It has no 
power over the person or property of a citizen but what 
the citizens of the United States have granted. And 
no laws or usages of other nations, nor reasoning of 
litatesmen or jurists, upon the relation of master and 
Blave, can enlarge the powers of the government, or take 
from the citizens the rights they have reserved. And 
if the Constitution recognizes the right of property of 
the master in a slave, and makes no distinction" be- 
tween that description of property and other property 
owned by a citizen, no tribuncd, acting under the om- 
thority of the United States, whether it be legislative, 
executive or judicial, has a right to draw such a dis- 
tinction, or deny to it the benefit of the provisiojis and 
guarantees which have been provided for the protection 
of private property against the encroachments of the 
government. 



"Now, as we have already said in an earlier part of 
this opinion, upon a different point, THE RIGHT OF 
PROPERTY IN A SLAVE IS DISTINCTLY AND 
EXPRESSLY AFFIRI\IED IN THE CONSTITUTION. 
The riglit of traffic in it, like an ordinary article of 
merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the 
citizens of the United States in every State that might 
desire it. for twenty years. And the Government in 
express terms is pledged to protect it in all future time, 
if the slave escapes from his owner. This is done in 
plain words, too plain to he misunderstood. And no 
word can be found in the Constitution which gives 
Congress a greater power over slave property, or 
which entitles property of that kind to less protection 
than property of any other description. The only 
power conferred is the power coupled with the duty of 
guarding and protecting the owner in his rights.''' 



POINTS ESTABLISHED BY THE DECISION, 

In the 19th vol. of Howard's Reports, page 
395, a syllabus of the Dred Scott decision, em- 
bracing the points established by the Court, is 
given in the following words : 

1st. "The Territory thus acquired, is acquired by 
the people of the United States for their common and 
equal benefit, through their agent and trustee — the 
Federal Government. Congress can exercise no power 
over the rights of persons or property of a citizen in 
the Territory which is prohibited by the Constitution. 
The Government and the citizen, whenever the Terri- 
tory is open to settlement, both enter with their re- 
spective rights defined and limited by the Constitu- 
tion." 

2d. " Congress has no right to prohibit citizens of 
any particular State or States, from takin,^ up their 
homes there, while it permits citizens of other States 
to do so. Nor has it a right to give privileges to one 
class of citizens which ""it refuses to another. The 
Territory is acquired for their equal and common ben- 
efit, and if open to any, it must be open to all upon 
equal and the same terms." 

3d. "EVEKY CITIZEN HAS A EIGHT TO TAKE WITH HIM 
INTO THE TERRITORY ANY ARTICLE OF PROPERTY WHICH 

THE Constitution of the United States recocj- 

NIZES AS PROPERTY." 

4th. "The Constitution of the United States 

REGULATES SLAVES AS PROPERTY, AND PLEDGES THE 

Federal Government to protect it. And Congress 
cannot exercise any more authority over property of 
that description, than it may constitutionally exercise 
over property of any other kind." 

.5th. " The act of Congress, therefore, prohibiting a 
citizen of the United States taking with him his 
slaves when he removes to the Territory in question to 
reside, is an exercise of authority over private 
property which is not warranted by the Consti- 
TtJTioN, and the removal of the plaintift; by his owner, 
to that Territory, gave him no title to freedom." 

6th. "While it remains a Territory, Congress may 
legislate over it within the scope of its constitutional 
powers, in relation to citizens of the United States, 
and may establish a Territorial Government, and the 
form of this local government must be regulated by the 
discretion of Congress; but with powers not exceed- 
ing those which Congress itself, by the Constitution, 
is authorized to exercise over citizens of the United 
States, in respect to their rights of property." 

Senator Benjamin, in his speech of May 22d, 
1860, says that this syllabus was prepared and 
written out by Judge Taney himself. 



MR. DOUGLAS INDORSES THE WHOLE DECISION. 

The Dred Scott decision was delivered in 
March, 1857. Mr. Buchanan had just been in- 
augurated, and the Senate had just adjourned. 
Mr. Douglas took an early occasion to give in his 
adhesion, not only to the decision that Dred Scott 
was not a citizen, and therefore could not bring 
suit in a Circuit Court of the United States, but 
also to the obiter dictum, that neither Congress 
nor a Territorial Legislature could prohibit sla- 
very in a Territory. Having found a Grand Jury 
in session at Springfield, in the month of June 
following, an invitation was procured from that 
august body, calling for the views of Mr. Douglas 



on three points, to wit : the Lecompton Conven- 
tion in Kansas ; the proposed invasion of Utah ; 
and the Dred Scott Decision. On the last men- 
tioned topic he spoke as follows : 

" The character of Chief Justice Taney and the asso- 
ciate judges who concurred with him require no eulo- 
gy — or vindication from me. They are endeared to the 
people of the United States by their eminent public 
services — venerated for their great learning, wisdom 
and experience— and beloved for the spotless purity of 
their characters and their exemplary lives. The poi- 
sonous shafts of partisan malice will fall harmless at 
their feet, while their judicial decisions will stand in 
all future time, a proud monument to their greatness, 
the admiration of the good and wise, and a rebuke to 
the partisans of faction and lawless violence. 

" The Court did not attempt to avoid responsibility 
by disposing of the case upon technical points withoitt 
touching the merits, nor did they go out of their way 
to decide questions not properly before them and di- 
rectly presented by the record, Like honest and consci- 
entious judges, as they are, they met and decided each 
point as it arose, and faithfully performed their whole 
duty, and nothing but their dutv, to their countrv. BY 
DETERMINING ALL THE QUESTIONS IN 'THE 
CASE, and nothing but what was essential to the de- 
cision of the case upon its merits." — Douglas' Spring- 
field Grand Jury Speech, June 12th, 1S5T— a-5 is publish- 
ed in, the State Eegister. 



HE BELIKVES THAT THE RIGHTS OF THE PEOPBE 
OF THB TERRIORIES ARE " HELD IN ABETAXCE." 

On the 12th of March, 1856, Mr. Douglas sub- 
mitted his famous report, accompanying a bill 
for the admission of Kansas into the Union as a 
State. Senator Chase's amendment to the Ne- 
braska bill, authorizing the people to exclude 
slavery while in a territorial condition, having 
been vot«d down, and the right of a Territorial 
Legislature to prohibit slavery having thus been 
denied, it became important to know whether, in 
Mr. Douglas' opinion, the peop/e can in any other 
way exclude slavery prior to the formation of a 
State Constitution. On this point Mr. Douglas is 
very explicit in denying the right. In the report 
here referred to he says : 

" Without deeming it necessary to express any opin- 
ion on this occasion, in reference to that [the Rhode 
Island] controversy, it is evident that the principles 
upon which it was conducted are not involved in the 
revolutionary struggle now going on in Kansas ; for 

THE reason that THE SOVEREIGNTY OF A TERRITORY 

REMAINS IN ABEYANCE SUSPENDED IN THE 
UNITED STATES, IN TRUST FOR THE PEOPLE, 
UNTIL THEY SHALL BE ADMITTED INTO THE 
UNION AS A ST KT^r —Douglas' Report on Kansas 
Affairs, March 12, 1856, page 39. 

This remarkable statement, taken by itself, 
would seem to be an open avowal of the Repub- 
lican doctrine that Congress is the rightful guar- 
dian of the Territories until they are prepared for 
admission into the Union as States, but taken 
with the context, it is no less than a foreshadow- 
ing of the Dred Scott decision. In other words, 
it denies that species of " sovereignty " to the 
Territories which authorizes them to exclude sla- 
very, and holds them on this point rigidly " sub- 
ject to the Constitution of the United States," as 
interpreted by the Supreme Court. It is conclu- 
sive, however, of one thing, to wit, that ''the 
sovereignty of a Territory remains in abeyance " 
— that tlie people cannot do the things which Mr. 
Douglas himself proclaimed they might do— that 
they cannot do those things either through a 
Territorial Legislature or by Mass Convention, 
for the reason that their sovereignly is " suspend- 
ed in the United States, in trust for the people, 

UNTIL THEY SHALL BE ADMITTED INTO THE UNION 
AS A ST.4TE." 



HE SAYS THAT SLAVES ARE RECOGNIZED AS " PRO- 
PERTY " BY THE CONSTITUTION. 

On the 6th of December, 1S58, Mr. Douglas 
spoke at New Orleans, The following quotation 
from his speech is taken from the report in the 
New Orleans Delta : 

"I, in common with the Democracy of Illinois, ac- 
cept the Dred Scott decision of the Supreme Court of 
the United States, in the Dred Scott case, as an autho- 
ritative exposition of the Constitution. Whatever 
limitations the Constitution, as expounded by the 
Courts, impose on the authority of a Territorial Legis- 
ture, we cheerfully recognize and respect in conformity 
with that decision. Slaves are recognized as property, 
and placed on an equal footing with all other property. 
Hence, the owner of Slaves — the same as the owner of any 
other spiecies of property— has a right to retnove to a Ter- 
ritory and can-y his property with him.''' 



HE REPEATS THAT SLAVES MAY BE TAKEN TO THE 
TERRITORIES LIKE OTHER PROPERTY. 

Some of the Douglas oi-gans in thel^orth have 
undertaken to say that their champion never ut- 
tered the words quoted above from his New Or- 
leans speech. They will hardly deny, however, 
that he repeated it even more offensively in the 
Senate, on the 23d of February, 1859, in a debate 
with Jeff. Davis, when he said : 

" I do not put slavery on a different footing from 
other property. I recognize it as property under what 
is understood to be the decision of the Supreme Court, 
I argue that the owner of slaves HAS 'TH E SAME 
RIGHT TO REMOVE TO THE TERRITORIES and 
CARRY HIS SLAVE PROPERTY NVITII HIiM AS 
THE OWNER OF ANY OTHER SPECIES OF PRO- 
PERTY, and hold the same, subject to such local laws 
as the Territorial legislature may constitutionally pass, 
and if any person shall feel aggrieved by such local le- 
gislation, he may appeal to the Supreme Court to test 
the validity of such laws. I recognize slave property 
to be on an equality icith all other property, and apply 
the same rules to it. I v>-ill not apply one rule to slave 
property, and another to all other kinds of property," 
— Cong. Globe, 1858-9, ^a/'^ 2, page 125(5. 

And again : 

" Slaves, according to that decision, being property, 
stand on an equal footing with all other property. 
THERE IS JUST AS MUCH OBLIGATION ON THE 
PART OF THE TERRITORIAL LEGISLATURE TO 
PROTECT SLAVES AS EVERY OTHER SPECIES 
OF PROPERTY, AS THERE IS TO PROTECT HORS- 
ES. CATTLE, DRY GOODS, LIQUORS, 6uC.''—Cang. 
Globe, same vol., page 1258. 

And again : 

'•Hence, under the Constitution, there is no power 
to prevent a Southern man going into the Territories 
with his slaves, more than a Northern man."— J/r. 
Douglas'' Memphis Speech, Nov. 29, 1858, as published in 
the Avalanche. 



WHAT HE IS OBLIGED TO DO IX THE PREMISES. 

In his letter replying to Judge Black's criticism 
on his Harpers' Magazine article, Mr. Douglas 
took pains to tell what he deemed all persons 
obliged to do who hold that slavei-y exists in the 
Territories by virtue of the Constitution. He 
said : 

" In that article, without assailing any one, or im- 
pugning any man's motive. I demonstrated, beyond the 
possibility of cavil or dispute, if slavery exists in the 
Territories by virtue of the Constitution, the conclu- 
sion is inevitable and irresistible. TH^iT IT IS THE 
IMPERATIVE DUTY OF CONGRESS TO PVSS ALL 
LAWS NECESSARY FOR ITS PROTECTION; that 
THERE IS AND CAN BE NO EXCEPTION TO THE 
RULE, THAT A RIGHT GUARANTEED BY THE 
CONSTITUTION MUST BE PROTECTED BY LAW 
IN ALL CASES WHERE LEGISLATION IS ESSEN- 
TIAL TO ITS ENJOY.AIENT. That all who believe 
that slavery exists in the Territories by v'lrtue of the 
Constitution are bound by their conscience, and oaths 



of fidelity to the Constitution, to svpport a Congres- 
sional slave-code in the Territories.'''' 

This direct and unequivocal statement of tlie 
duty of those who believe that slavery exists in 
the Territories by virtue of the Constitution, nar- 
rows the whole controversy between Douglas and 
Breckinridge down to a quibble, to wit : Is the 
right to carry slave property into the Territories, 
which Mr. Douglas concedes in the extracts quo- 
ted above, equivalent to the existence of slavery 
in the Territories by virtue of the Constitution ? 
To use the brief and concise phrase employed by 
Mr. Lincoln in his Columbus speech, " Can a 
thing be lawfully driven away from a place where 
it has a lawful riglit to be ?" Whicli faction of 
the Democracy has the advantage of logic and 
truthfulness in this controversy ? 



HE DROPS " POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY" ALTOGETHER. 

Mr. Douglas has so frequently reindorsed the 
Dred Scott decision, that it is hardly worthwhile 
to notice his subsequent remarks on tliat theme. 
Let it be observed, however, that, after the Illi- 
nois election of 1858, Mr. Douglas ceased talking 
about the right of Territorial Legislatures to ex- 
clude slavery, but commenced on an entirely new 
theme, to wit: "the right of tlxe people to con- 
trol slavery as property." On the 22d of June, 
1859, Mr. Douglas wrote the following letter to 
J. B. Dorr, Esq., the editor of the Dubuque Her- 
ald, which was immediately telegraphed all over 
the country as the groundwork of principles on 
which he would be willing to accept the nomina- 
tion of the Charleston Convention : 

" Washington, June 22, 1859. 

"My Deak Sir— I have received your letter inquiring 
whether my friends are at liberty to present my name 
to the Charleston Convention for the Presidential nom- 
ination. 

"Before this question can finally be determined, it 
will be necessary to understand distinctly upon what 
issues the canvass is to be conducted. If, as I have 
full faith they will, the Democratic party shall deter- 
mine, in the Presidential election of 1800, to adhere to 
the principles embodied in the Compromise measures 
of 1850, and ratified by the people in the Presidential 
election of 1852, and reaffirmed in the Kansas-Nebraska 
Act of 1854, and incorporated into the Cincinnati Plat- 
form in 185(5, as expounded by Mr. Buchanan in his let- 
ter accepting the nomination, and approved by the 
people in his election,— in that event, my friends will 
be at liberty to present my name to the Convention, if 
they see proper to do so. If, on the contrary, it shall 
become the policy of the Democratic party, which I 
cannot anticipate, to repudiate these, their' time-hon- 
ored principles, on which we have achieved so many 
patriotic truimphs, and in lieu of them the Convention 
shall interpolate into the creed of the party such new 
issues as the revival of the slave-trade, or a Congres- 
sional slave-code for the Territories, or the doctrine 
that the Constitution of the United States ever estab- 
lished or prohibited slavery in the Territories beyond 
the ijower of the jpeople legally to control it as property— 
it is due to candor to say, that, in such an event, I 
could not accept the nomination, if tendered to me. 
Trusting that this answer will be deemed sufficiently 
explicit, I am, very respectfully, 

"Your friend, S. A. DOUGLAS. 

"J. B. Dorr, Esq., Dubuque, Iowa." 

Probably the best exposition wliich has been 
made of this new dogma is found in Mr. Lincoln's 
speech delivered at Columbus, Ohio, in Septem- 
ber, 1859, where he noticed the change in Mr 
Douglas' tone as follows : 

"What he says now is something different in lan- 
guage, and we will consider whether it is not difierent 
\\\ sense too. It is_, now, that the Dred Scott decision, 
or rather the Constitmicn under that decision, does not 
carry slavery into the Territories beyond the power of 
the people of the Territories to control it as other pro- 
perty. He does not say that people can drive it out, 
■fout they can control it as other property. The language 



is different : we should consider whether the sense is 
different. Driving a horse out of this lot is too plain 
a proposition to be mistaken about : it is putting him 
on the other side of the fence. Or it might be a sort 
of exclusion of him from the lot if you were to kill him 
and let the worms devour him ; but neither of these 
things is the same as ' controlling him as other proper- 
ty.' That would be to feed him, to pamper him, to ride 
him, to use and abuse him, to make the most money 
out of him ' as other property ;' but please you, what 
do the men who are in favor of slavery want more tlian 
this •? What do they really want, other than that slave- 
ry, being in the Territories, shall be controlled as other 
property?" 



HE GOES FOR SUPREME COURT SOVEREIGNTY. 

In his speech of February 23d, 1859, already 
referred to, Mr. Douglas again declared himself 
ready to follow the Supreme Court to the crush- 
ing out of Popular Sovereignty. He said : 

" When the Supreme Court shall decide upon the 
constitutionality of the local [Territorial] laws, I AM 
PREPARED TO ABIDE BY THE DECISION WHAT- 
EVER IT MAY BE, AND HAVE IT EXECUTED 
IN GOOD FAITH AS WELL AS IN OTHER CASES." 
Cong. Globe, 1858-59, part 2, page 1259. 

And again in liis speech of May 16th, 1860, 
having read the Tennessee Compromise resolution 
offered at the Charleston Convention, which was 
as follows : 

" That all citizens of the United States have an equal 
right to settle with their property in the Territory, and 
that under the decision of the Supreme Court which we 
recognize as an exposition of the Constitution, neither 
their rights of person or property can be destroyed or 
impaired by Congressional or Territorial legislation." 

— he proceeded to remark : 

" The second proposition is, that a right of person 
or property, secured by the Constitution, cannot be 
taken away by act of Congress or of the Territorial 
Legislature. Who ever dreamed that either Congress 
or a Territorial Legislature, or any other legislative 
body on earth could destroy or impair any right guar- 
anteed or secured by the Constitution? No man that 
I know oi.""— Appendix to the Cong. Globe, 1859-60, 
2Mge 316. 



HE TELLS HOW TO CARRY OUT SUPREME COURT 
SOVEREIGNTY. 

In the same speech (May 16th, 1860), he tells 
how to carry out Supreme Court Sovereignty, as 
follows : 

" When that case shall arise, and the Court shall pro- 
nounce its judgment, it will be binding on me, on you, 
sir, and on every good citizen. It must be carried out 
in good taith; AND ALL THE POWER OF THIS 
GOVERNMENT— THE ARMY, THE NAVY, AND 
THE MILITIA— ALL THAT WE HAVE— MUST BE 
EXIDR'J'ED TO CARRY THR DECISION INTO EF- 
FECT IN GOOD FAITH, IF THERE BE RESIST- 
ANCE."— J.i?pe««!ia; to Cong. Globe, 1859—60, page 311. 



HE IS UTTERLY OPPOSED TO " SaUATTER SOVE- 
REIGNTY," 

In a colloquy with Senators Davis and Gwin, 
in the Senate, on the 17th of May, 1860, Mr. 
Douglas utterly repudiated " squatter sovereign- 
ty," in the following words : 

"Regarding Squatter Sovereignty as a nickname in- 
vented bv the Senator and those with whom he acts, 
Avhich I have never recognized, I must leave him to 
define the meaning of his own term. I have denounced 
Squatter Sovereignty when you find it setting up a 
Government in violation of law, as you do now at 
Pike's Peak. I denounced it this year. When you 
find an unauthorized Legislature, in violation of law, 
setting up a Government without sanction of Congress 
or Court, that is Squatter Sovereignty which I oppose. 
There is the case of Dakotah, where you have left a 
whole people without any law or territorial organiza- 
tion, with no mode of appeal from Squatter Courts to 
the United States Courts to correct their decisions— 
that is Squatter Sovereignty in violation of the Con- 
stitution and laws of the United States. There is a 
similar government set up over a part of Calijornia 



and a part of the Territory of Utah, called Nevada. It 
has a delegate here, claiming to represent it. I have 
denounced that as unlawful. I am opposed to all 
such Squatter Sovereignty. If that is what the Sena- 
tor referred to, I am against it. All I say is, the people 
of a Territory, when they have hecome organized under 
the Constitution and laws, have legislative power 
over all rightful subjects of legislation consistent with 
the Constitution of the United States. That is the 
language of the law, and if they exercise legislative 
powers on any subject inconsistent with the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, the courts, tp whom appeal 
may he taken under the laws, will correct their errors. 
That is a\\.— Cong. Globe, 1859-60, page 2147. 



HE REPUDIATES TERRITORIAL SOVEREIGNTY ALSO. 

The following extract from Mr. Douglas' letter 
ill reply to Judge Black's criticism on bis Har- 
pers' Magazine essay, puts everything at sixes 
and sevens again as regards his views of the sove- 
reignty \vhicli belongs to the people of a Territory. 
In that letter he says : 

"I have never said or thought that our Territories 
were sovereign political communities, or even limited 
sovereignties, like the States of this Union." 

And again, in a colloquy with Mr. Clay, of Ala- 
bama, in the Senate, February 23, 1859, he was 
still more explicit in denying sovereignty to the 
Territories : 

" I will answer the Senator's question. First: I do 
not hold that squatter sovereignty is superior to the 
Constitution. I HOLD THAT NO SUCH THING AS 
SOVEREIGN POWER ATTACHES TO A TERRI- 
TORY WHILE A TERRITORY. I hold that a Terri- 
tory possesses whatever power it derives from the Con- 
stitution, under the organic act, and no more. I hold 
that ALL the power that a Territorial Legislature pos- 
sesses is derived from the Constitution and its amend- 
nicats. under the acts of Congress; and because I held 
that, 1 denied last year that the people of a Territory, 
vjVhout the consent of Congress, could assemble at Le- 
conipton and create an organic law for that people. I 
denied the A'alidity of your Lecompton Constitution, 
for the reason that Constitutions can only be made by 
sovereign power, and because the Territory was not a 
sovereignty, that was not a Constitution, but a peti- 
tion."— Co/ig'. Globe, 1858-59, part 2, -page 1246. 

It will be noticed, also, that, in these remarks, 
Mr. Douglas supplied a link hitherto missing in 
the chain which binds him to the Dred Scott de- 
ci>.ion. It is this : the Supreme Court say, that, 
whereas Congress cannot prohibit slavery in the 
Territory, it cannot delngate such power to a Ter- 
ritorial Legislature. Mr. Douglas steps in at this 
point and says that all the powers vested in a 
Territory are derived through the act of Congress 
organizing it. They have no powers that ai-e not 
so derived. Hence, if Congress cannot prohibit 
slavery in a Territory, neither can the people of 
the Territory do so by any means whatever. 



A (QUESTION WHICH HE WTILL NOT ANSWER. 

In his colloquy with Mr. Davis, in the Senate, 
May 17, 1860, Mr. Douglas refused to answer the 
question, whether he would or would not sign a 
bill to protect slave property in the Territories, 
if he were President of the United States. This 
is -a question which has an immediate and special 
siguiiicance, and one which each voter has a right 
to put to Mr. Douglas and every other candidate 
for President or Vice-President. Fortunately, 
we have Mi*. Douglas' reply, or his refusal to re- 
ply, on record. The colloquy was as follows : 

"Mr. Davis— If it will not embarrass the Senator. 
I would ask him if, as Chief Executive of the United 
States, he would sign a bill to protect slave property in 
State, Territory, or District of Columbia— an act of 
Congress. 

*•' Mr. Douglas — It will be time enough for me or 
any other man to say what bills he will sign when he 
is in a position to execute the power. 



"Mb. Davis— I shall not ask you a question further 
than you wish to answer — certainly not. 

"Mr. Douglas— The Senator can ask ajl the ques- 
tions he pleases, and I shall answer them when I please; 
but I was going to say that I do not recognize the right 
to catechise me in this way. The Senator has no right 
to do it after sneering at my pretensions to the place 
which he assumes that I desire to occupy. 

" Mr. Davis — I grant the Senator the right not to an- 
swer the question, though it seemed tome to be leading 
very directly up to an exact understanding between us 
as to what he meant by non-intervention. I, however, 
will not press that, or any other question, against his 
wishes."— Co/j.g'. Globe, 1859-60, i^a^'e 2147. 



HE GOES DIRECTLY FOR SUPREME COURT SOVER- 
EIGNTY AND A TERRITORIAL SLAVE CODE. 

On the 23d of June, 1860, the Douglas wing of 
the National Democratic Convention, at Balti- 
more, finished up its business by adopting the 
following resolution as a part of its platform, — 
the resolution having been offered by Mr. Wick- 
liffe, of Louisiana, who declared that its adoption 
would give Mr. Douglas 40,000 votes in that 
State : 

" Resolved, That it is in accordance with the Cincin- 
nati platform, that during the existence of Territorial 
Governments, the measure of restriction, whatever it 
may be, imposed by the Federal Constitution on the 
power of the Territorial Legislature over the subject of 
the domestic relations, as the same has been or shall 
hereafter be decided by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, should be respected by all good citizens, and 
enforced with promptness and fidelity by every branch 
of the General Government.'''' 

In his letter accepting the nomination, Mr. 
Douglas gave his particular attention to the 
Wickliffe slave-code resolution, remarking upon 
it as follows : 

"Upon a careful examination of the platform of 
principles adopted at Charleston and re-afHrmed at 
Baltimore, with an additional resolution which is in 
perfect harmony with the others, I find it to be a faith- 
ful embodiment of the time-honored principles of the 
Democratic party, as the same were proclaimed and 
understood by all parties in the Presidential contests 
of 1848, 1852 and 18o()." 

Thus has squatter sovereignty at last been 
completely squatted out ! 



HE ENDEAVORS TO BRING KANSAS INTO THE UNION 
WITHOUT HAVING HER CONSTITUTION SUBMITTED 
TO THE PEOPLE. 

On the 25th of June, 1856, while the bill for 
the admission of Kansas was pending in the 
Senate, Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, introduced an 
amendment, which was ordered to be printed, 
and, with the original bill and other amendments, 
recommended to the Committee on Territories, 
of which Mr. Douglas was Chairman. This 
amendment of Mr. Toombs, printed by order of 
the Senate, provided for the appointment of com- 
missioners who were to take a census of Kansas, 
divide the Territory into election districts, and. 
superintend the election of delegates to ioxva a 
Constitution, and contains a clause in the 18th 
section requiring the Constitution which should 
be formed to be submitted to the people for 
adoption, as follows : 

" That the following propositions be and the same 
are hereby offered to the said Convention of the people 
of Kansas, when formed, for their free acceptance or 
rejection, which, if accepted by the Convention, and 

RATIFIED BY THE PEOPLE AT THE ELECTION FOR THE 

ADOPTION OF THE CONSTITUTION, Shall be Obligatory on 
the United States, and upon the said State of Kansas, 
etc." 

This amendment of Mr. Toombs was referred 
to the committee of which Mr. Douglas was 
Chairman, and reported back by him on the 30th 



10 



of June, with tlie words "And ratified by the 
people at the election for the adoption of the 
Constitution" stricken out. On the 9th of De- 
cember, 185 7, Senator Bigler explained how the 
submission clause came to be stricken out, as 
follows : 

"I was present when that subject was discussed by- 
Senators, before the bill was introduced, and the ques- 
tion was raised and discussed whether the Constitu- 
tion, when formed, should be submitted to a vote of the 
people. It was held by the most intelligent on the 
subject, that in view of all the difficulties surrounding 
that Territory, the danger of any experiment at that 
time of a popular vote, it would be better that there 

SHOULD BE NO SUCH PROVISION IN THE ToOMBS' BILL ; 

and it is my understanding in all the intercoui'se I 
had, that that Convention would make a Constitution 
and send it here without submitting it to the popu- 
lar VOTE."— Co/is-. Globe, part 1, 1857-5S, page 21. 

Referring to same subject again on the 21st of 
December, 1857, Mr. Bigler continued: 

'' Nothing was further from my mind than to allude 
to any social or confidential interview. The meeting 
was not of that character. Indeed, it was semi-official, 
and called to promote the public good. My recollec- 
tion was clear that I left the conference under the im- 
pression that it had been deemed best to adopt meas- 
ures to admit Kansas as a State through the agency of 
one popular election, and that for delegates to the 
Convention. This impression was the stronger, be- 
cause I thought the spirit of the bill infringed upon the 
doctrine of non-intervention, to which I had great 
aversion; but with the hope of accomplishing great 
good, and as no movement had been made in that di- 
rection in the Territory, I waived this objection, and 
concluded to support the measure. I have a few items 
of testimony as to the correctness of these impressions, 
and with their submission I shall be content. I have 
before me the bill reported by the Senator from Illi- 
nois, on the Tth of March, 1850, providing for the admis- 
sion of Kansas as a State, the third section of which 
reads as follows : 

" ' That the following propositions be, and the same 
are hereby oftored to the said Convention of the people 
of Kansas, when formed, for their free acceptance or 
rejection : which, if accepted by the Convention and 
ratified by the people at the election for the adoption of 
the Constitution, shall be obligatory upon the United 
States, and upon the said State of Kansas.' 

" The bill read in place by the Senator from Georgia, 
on the 25th of June, and referred to the Committee on 
Territories, contained the same section, word for word. 
Both these bills were under consideration at the con- 
ference referred to, but, sir, when the Senator from 
Illinois reporled the Toombs bill to the Senate, with 
amendments, the next morning, it did not contain that 
portion of the third section which indicated to the 
Convention that the Constitution should be approved 
by the people. The words ' and ratified by the people 
at the election for the adoption of the Constitution,' 
had been stricken out."— Cows'. Globe, part 1, 1857-8, 
pages 113 and 114. 

Better testimony, however, is that of Toombs 
himself, delivered in the Senate on the 18th of 
March, 1857, as follows : 

"The first twelve sections provided the machinery 
for executing the (Toombs) bill, so that there should 
be no dispute as to its fairness. 

" The other sections, containing only the formal parts 
of the bill, incident to every enabling act, I cut off 
with my scissors from a printed bill before me. The 
first twelve sections are in my own writing. In the 
thirteenth section, under the usual clause, stating that 
the following shall be the 'aindamental conditions of 
admission. THERE WERE WORDS REQUIRING A 
SUBMISSION OF THE CONSTITUTION TO THE 
PEOPLE. That I did not observe. 

•' When the bill came up for consideration between 
some gentlemen of the Committee and myself, there 
being no provision in the bill for a second election ; 
there being no safeguards for such a popular election; 
the bill being incongruous as to that purpose, I sug- 
gested the striking out of this clause. It was done as 
the report shows. It having got there by accident, it 
was stricken out at my suggestion, as a matter of 
course. The principles itpon which that measure was 
Taased, were these : — First, that all the legal voters of 
the Territory should have a fair opportunity, free from 
force or fraud, to elect a Convention, and to make a 
Constitution; AND THEN THAT THEY SHOULD 
COME INTO '1 HE UNION, UNDER THAT CONSTI- 



TUTION, WITHOUT REFERRING EITHER THE 
CONSTITUTION TO THE PEOPLE, OR THE QUES. 
TION OF ADMISSION AGAIN TO CONGRESS. It 
was intended as an assent to admission, in advance." 
—Appendix to the Cong. Globe, 1857-58, page 127. 

Best of allf however, is the testimony of Mr. 
Douglas, given in the Senate, on the 9th of De- 
cember, 1857, as follows : 

" Din-ing the last Congress I reported a bill from the 
Committee on Territories, to authorize the people of 
Kansas to assemble and form a Constitution for them- 
selves. Subsequently the Senator from Georgia (Mr. 
Toombs) brought forward a substitute for my bill, 

which, AFTER HAVING BEEN MODIFIED BY HIM AND MY- 
SELF IN CONSULTATION, was passcd by the Senate.'' 
— Cong. Globe, part 1, 1857-58, page 15. 

Bigler and Toombs having avowed their com- 
plicity in the swindle, Mr. Douglas thus makes 
haste to admit his share in it, by saying that it 
was modified "by himself and Toombs in con- 
sultation." What was the modification ? Sim- 
ply this : that Mr, Douglas reported the bill back, 
not only with the submission clause stricken 
out, but with a new clause inserted, which reads 
as follows : 

"and until the COMPLETE EXECUTION OF THIS ACT, 

NO OTHER ELECTION SHALL BE HELD IN SAID 
TERRITORY." 

Can any one fail to comprehend this clear and 
logical chain of evidence ? At the time when 
Douglas and Toombs were at work on their pre- 
cious conspiracy, Kansas was in the hands of the 
Border Rutfians and entirely at their mercy. The 
Territorial office-holders were nearly all assassins 
and outlaws. The Federal troops were either 
assisting or conniving at the Missouri invasion. 
Under these circumstances is there any doubt 
what kind of a Constitution would have been 
made by the Buford- Atchison gang who were 
then ravaging Kansas, when they understood 
perfectly that their act would be conclusive of 
tlie destinies of the Territory, and when Douglas 
had especially provided that "until the complete 
execution of the act, no other election shall he 
held m the Territory /" 



HE DEFENDS THE BORDER RUFFIANS OF MISSOURI. 

In his report of March 12th, 1856, already re- 
ferred to, Mr Douglas defended the Border Ruf- 
fian invaders of Kansas, as follows : 

" The natural consequence was, that immediate steps 
were taken by the people of the western counties of 
Missouri to stimulate, organize and carry into effect a 
system of emigration similar to that of the Massachu- 
setts Emigrant Aid Company, for the avowed purpose 
of counteracting the effects and protecting themselves, 
and their domestic institutions from the consequences 
of that company's operations. The material difference 
in the character of the two rival and conflictmg move- 
ments consists in the fact that the one had its origin in 
a7i AGGRESSIVE and the other in a DEFENSIVE 
policy.'''' 



HE DECLARES THE BOGUS LEGISLATURE OF KAN- 
SAS TO HAVE BEEN VALID. 

In the same report, and on page 15 thereof, 
Mr. Douglas asserted the validity of the bogus 
Legislature, and its acts, as follows : 

" So far as the question involves THE LEGALITY 
OF THE KANSAS LEGISLATURE AND THE VALID- 
ITY OF ITS ACTS, it is entirely immaterial whether 
we adopt the reasoning and conclusion of the minority 
or majoritv reports, for each Proves that the LEGTb- 
LATURE WAS LEGALLY AND DULY CONSTI- 
TUTED." 



11 



HE SATS THE PEOPLE OF KANSAS MUST BE 
" SUBDUED," 

In the same report, and on page 40 thereof, 
he advocates the subjection of the people of 
Kansas, in the following words : 

"In this connection, your Committee feel sincere 
satisfaction in commending the messages and pro- 
clamations of the President, in which we have the 
gratifying assurance that the supremacy of the lawn 
will be maintained ; that rebellion will be crushed ; 
* * * that the federal and local laws will be vindi- 
cated against all attempts of organized resistance." 

And again, in his speech of March 12th, 
1856: 

" The minority report advocates foreign interference ; 
we advocate self-government and non-interference. 
We are ready to meet the issue, and there v/ill be no 
dodging. We intend to meeet it boldlv ; TO REQUIRE 
SUB.MISSION TO THE LAWS AND TO THE CON- 
STITUTED AUTHORITIES ; TO REDUCE TO SUB- 
JECTION THOSE WHO RESIST THEM, AND TO 
PUNISH REBELLION AND TREASON. I am glad 
that a defiant spirit is exhibited here; we accept the 
issue."— Cong. Globe^ parti, 1855-5(5, pap'e 639. 



HE THINKS SENATOR SUMNER SHOULD BE 
" KICKED LIKE A DOG." 

On the 20th day of May, 1856, Mr. Douglas 
mdulged in the following language, in reply to 
Senator Sumner — the day on which he was blud- 
geoned by Preston S. Brooks : 

"It is his object to provoke some of lis to KICK 
HIM AS WE WOULD A DOG ! A hundred times has 
he called the Nebraska Bill a swindle — an act of in- 
famy, and each time went on to illustrate the com- 
plicity of each man who voted for it in perpetrating 
the crime. * * * How dare he approach one of 
these crentlemen, to give him his hand, after that act ? 
If he felt the courtesies between men, he would not do 
it. He would deserve to have himself SPIT IN THE 
FACE for doing ^^o.""— Appendix to the Cong. Globe, 
1855-56, page 545. 



HE VINDICATES DAVID R, ATCHISON. 

In the same speech, and on the same day, Mr. 
Douglas proceeded to vindicate David R. Atchi- 
son, of Missouri, who was then leading a company 
of Border Ruffians against Kansas, in the follow- 
ing eulogistic terms : 

" The Senator has also made an assault on the late 
President of the Senate— General Atchison— a gentle- 
man OF AS KIND A NATUBE, OF AS GENUINE AND TRUE 
A HEART AS EVER ANIMATED A HUMAN SOUL. He iS 

impulsive and generous, carrying his good qualities 
sometimes to an excess, which induces him to say and 
do many things that would not meet my approval ; but 
all who know him, know him to be a gentleman and 
an honest 3IAN — true andloyal to the Constitution of 
his coxmiry."'— Appendix to the Cong. Globe, 1855-56, 
page 546. 



HE THINKS SENATOR TRUMBULL IS A TKAITOR, 
AND THAT ALL TRAITORS SHOULD BE HUNG. 

The following extract from Mr. Douglas' 
speech on Kansas affairs, in the Senate, March 
20tl), 1856, is submitted without comment. The 
language is sufficiently direct for the compiehen- 
sion of all fair-minded men : 

"A word or two more on another point and I will 
close. My colleague has made an assault on the Presi- 
dent of the United States for his efforts to vindicate the 
supremacy of the laws, and put down insurrection and 
rebellion in the Territory of Kansas. In my opinion, 
the President of the United States is entitled to the 
thanks of the whole country for the promptness and 
energy with which he has met the crisis. It was his 
imperative duty to maintain the supremacy of the laws 
and see that they are faithfully executed It was his 
duty to suppress 'rebellion and put down treason. My 
colleague says that it will be necessary to catch the trai- 
tor before the President can hang him. My opinion is 
that, from the signs of the times, and in view of all that 



is passing around us.'as well as at a distance, there will 
be vcrv little difficulty in arresting the traitors— and 
that. TOO. WITHOUT GOING ALL THE WAY TO 
KANSAS TO FIND THEM ! [Laughter.] This gov- 
ernment has shown itself the most powerful of any on 
earth in all respects except one. It has shown itself 
equal to foreign war or to domestic defence ; equal to 
anv emergency that may arise in the exercise of its 
high function in all things EXCEPT THE POWER TO 
HANG A TRAITOR! 

I trust in God that the time is not near at hand, and 
that it may never come, when it will be the imperative 
duty of those charged with the faithful execution of the 
laws, to exercise that power. I trust that calmer and 
wiser counsels will prevail ; that passion may subside, 
and reason and loyalty return, before the overt act shall 
be committed. I fervently hope that the occasion may 
never nrise vrhich shall render it necessary to test the 
power of the Government and the firmness of the ex- 
ecutive in this respect ; but if, unfortunately, that con- 
tingency shall happen ; if treason against the United 
Slates shall be consummated, far be it from my purpose 
to express the wish that the penalty of the law may not 
fall upon the traitor's head!^' — Apj^endix to the Cong. 
Globe, 1855—56, page 288. 



HE INDORSES THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION IN 
ADVANCE. 

On the 12th of June, 1857, Mr. Douglas made 
his " Grrand Jury " speech, so-called, at Spring- 
field, to which one reference has already been 
made. The following extracts from this speech 
are taken from the phonographic report publish- 
ed in the Missouri Republican of June 18th, 1857. 
The famous Lecompton Convention had just been 
called by the bogus Legislature, and on this topic 
he spoke as follows : 

"Kansas is about to speak for herself through her 
delegates assembled in convention to form a constitu- 
tion, preparatory to her admission into the Union on 
an equal footing with the original States. Peace and 
prosperity now prevail throughout her borders. The 
law under which her delegates are to be elected is be- 
lieved to be just and fair in all its objects and provi- 
sions. If any portion of the inhabitants, acting under 
the advice of political leaders in distant States, shall 
choose to absent themselves from the polls, and with- 
hold their votes, with a view of leaving the Free State 
Democrats in a minority, and thus securing a pro-slav- 
ery constitution in opposition to a majority of the 
people living under it, let the responsibility rest on 
those who, for partisan purposes, will sacrifice the prin- 
ciples they profess to cherish and promote." 



HE SAYS THE DECLARATTON OF INDEPENDENCE 
WAS NOT INTENDED TO INCLUDE "ALL MEN." 

In the same speech, Mr. Douglas ventilated his 
views of tlie Declaration of Independence, as fol- 
lows : 

"The signers of the Declaration of Independence, 
referred to the white man, and to him alone, when they 
declared that all men were created equal. They were in 
a struggle with Great Britain. The principle they were 
asserting was that a British sub.ject born on Ameri- 
can SOIL, WAS EQUAL TO A BRITISH SUBJECT BORN IN EN- 
GLAND— that a British subject here, was entitled to all 
the rights, and privileges, and immunities, under the 
British Constitution, that a British subject in England 
enjoyed : that their rights were inalienable, and hence 
that Parliament, Avhose power was omnipotent, had no 
power to alienate them." 

It appears thus, that in Mr. Douglas' opinion 
not only the African race^ but the German, Ital- 
ian, French, Scandinavian, and, indeed, every na- 
tion except the English, Irish, Scotch and Ameri- 
can, are excluded from all part or lot in the Dec- 
laration of Independence. The phrase "all men," 
does not refer to them. They have no business 
with the Fourth of July. It is to be observed 
that in this matter Mr. Douglas has outrun the 
Dred Scott decision itself, which, after quoting- 
the language of the Declaration of Independence, 
says : 

" The general words above quoted would seem to em- 
brace the whole human family, and if they were used 



12 



in a similar instrument at tWs day, would be so under- 
stood. But it is too clear for dispute, that the enslaved 
African race were not intended to he included, and 
formed no part of the people who framed and adopted 
this declaration." 



HE SAYS SLAVERY IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE 
RULES OF CIVILIZATION AND CHRISTIANITY. 

In tlie same speech Mr. Douglas gave utterance 
to the following atrocious sentiments on slavery 
in the abstract : 

" At that day the negro was looked upon as a being 
")f an inferior race. All history had proved that»in no 
part of the world or the world's history, had the ne.OTO 
ever shown himself capable of self-government, and it 
was not the intention of the founders of this govern- 
ment to violate that great law of God which made the 
distinction between the white and the black man. 
That distinction is plain and palpable, and it has been 
the rule of civilization and Christianity the world over, 
that xvhenever any man or set of men were incapable of 
taking care of themselves, they should consent to be gov- 
erned by those who are capable of managing their affairs 
for them.'"' 

In revising the Missouri Republican's report of 
this speech, for publication in the State Register^ 
Mr. Douglas or some discreet friend omitted this 
obnoxious paragraph. But that does not relieve 
him from the responsibility of it, because we find 
the same idea, in nearly the same language, in 
his Chicago speech of October 23d, 1850, as pub- 
lished in Sheahan's Life of Douglas, to wit : 

" The civilized world have always held that when 
^ny race of men have shown themselves so degraded 
by ignorance, superstition, cruelty and barbarism as to 
be utterly incapable of governing themselves, they 
must, in the nature of things, be governed by others, 
by such laws as are deemed applicable to their condi- 
tion.'"— ^S'Aea^'ifm''* Life of Douglas, page 184. 

This is popular sovereignty with a vengeance ! 



HE DON'T CARE WHETHER SLAVERY IS VOTED 
DOWN OR VOTED UP. 

It was with this epigrammatic phrase that Mr. 
Douglas signalized his objection to the Lecompton 
Constitution, on the 9th of December, 1857, 
when lie spoke as follows : 

"But I am told, on all sides, 'Oh, just wait: the 
pro-slavery chiuse will be voted down.' That does not 
obviate any of my objections: it does not diminish 
any of them. You have no more right to force a Free 
State Constitution on Kansas than a Slave State Con- 
stitution. If Kansas wants a Slave Stale Constitution, 
she has a right to it ; if she wants a Free State Constitu- 
tion, she has a right to it. It is none of my business 
which way the slavery clause is decided. I CARE NOT 
WHETHER IT IS VOTED DOWN OR VOTED UP." 
— Cong. Globe, 1857-58, part 1, page 18. 



HE URGES THAT SLAVERY SHOULD LAST FORRVER. 

In his joint debate with Mr. Lincoln, at Quin- 
cy, Illinois. Mr. Douglas frankly confessed that 
his " great principle " contemplated that slavery 
should last /orezjer. He said: 

" In this State, we have declared that a negro shall 
not be a citizen, and we have also declared that he shall 
not be a slave. We had a right to adopt that policy. 
Missouri has just as good a right to adopt the other poli- 
cy. I am now speaking of rights under the Constitu- 
tion, and not of moral or reli.^ious rights. I do not 
discuss the morals of the people of Missouri, but let 
them settle that matter for themselves. I hold that the 
people of the slaveholdino- States are civilized men as 
well as ourselves ; that they bear consciences as well 
as we : and that they are accountable to God and their 
posterity, and not to us. It is for them to decide, 
therefore, the moral and religious right of the slavery 
question for themselves, within their own limits, I 



assert that they had as much right under the Constitu- 
tion to adopt the system of policy which they have, aa 
we had to adopt ours. So it is with every other State 
in this Union. Let each State stand firmly by that 

treat constitutional right, let each State miiid its own 
usiness and let its neighbors alone, and there will be 
no trouble on this question. If we will stand by that 
principle, then Mr. Lincoln will find that this Republic 
CAN EXIST FOREVER DIVIDED INTO FREE and 
SLAVE STATES, as our fathers made it, and the peo- 
ple of each State have decided."— iinco^/i and Douglas 
Debates of 1858, page 209. 



HE SAYS IF HE WERE A CITIZEN OF LOUISIANA 
HE WOULD VOTE FOR THE PERPETUATION OP 
SLAVERY. 

In his Sedition law speech, in the Senate, on 
the 23d of January, 1860, Mr. Douglas went a 
step further by asserting, roviudly and without 
qualification, that if he were a resident of a 
Southern State, lie would vote to retain and 
maintain slavery. His language was as follows : 

" Sir, I hold the doctrine that a wise statesman will 
adapt his laws to the wants, conditions and interests 
of the people to be governed bv them. SLAVERY 
MAY BE VERY ESSENTIAL m ONE CLIMATE 
AND TOTALLY USELESS IN ANOTHER. IF I 
WERE A CITIZEN OP LOUISIANA, I WOULD 
VOTE FOR RETAINING AND MAINTAINING 
SLAVERY, BECAUSE I BELIEVE THE GOOD OF 
THAT PEOPLE WOULD REQUIRE ITy—Cong. 
Globe, 1859-60, page 559. 



HE THINKS SLAVERY IS A MERE QUESTION OP 
DOLLARS AND CENTS. 

Shortly after the Illinois election of 1858, Mr. 
Douglas made a Southern tour, stopping at St. 
Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, and address- 
ing the people at those places on political topics. 
He spoke at Memphis, on the 29th of November, 
and the following is an extract from his speech 
as reported phonographically in the Memphis 
Avalanche : 

"Whenever a Territory has a climate, soil and pro- 
ductions making it the interest of the inhabitants to 
encourage slave property, they will pass a slave code 
and give it encouragement. Whenever the climate, 
soil and productions preclude the possibility of slavery 
being profitable, they will not permit it. You comb 

RIGHT BACK TO THE PRINCIPLE OP DOLLARS AND CENTS. 

I do not care where the immigration in the Southern 
country comes from : if old Joshua R. Giddings should 
raise a colony in Ohio and settle down in Louisiana, 
he would be the strongest advocate of slavery in the 
whole South ; he would find, when he got there, hia 
opinion of slavery would be very much modified ; he 
would find, on those sugar plantations, that it Avas not 
a question between the white man and the negro, but 
between the negro and the crocodile. He would say, 
that, between the negro and the crocodile, he took the 
side of the negro ; but, between the negro and the 
white man, he would go for the white man." 

Again, in his speech of February 29, 1860, in 
the Senate, in the course of his assault on Sena- 
tor Seward, he said : 

" We in Illinois tried Slavery while we were a Terri- 
tory, and found it was not profitable ; and hence we 
turned philanthropists and abolished it." — Cong. Globe, 
1859-60, page 915. 

And again in the same discussion : 

"But they (the people of Illinois) said, 'experience 
proves that it is not going to be profitable in this cli- 
mate.' They had no scruples about it. Every one of 
them was nursed by it. His father and his mother 
held slaves. They had no scruple about its being right, 
but they said, ' we cannot make any money by it, and 
as our State runs away off' north, up to those eternal 
snows, perhaps we shall gain population faster if we 
stop slavery and invite in the Northern population ;' 



13 



and as a matter of political policy, State policy, they 
prohibited slavery themselves."— Cons'. Globe, 1859-60, 
page 919. 



HE SAYS THE ALMIGHTY HAS KEaUIRED THE EX- 
ISTEIfCE OF SLAVERY ! 

In the Memphis speech, folio whig immediately 
after the extract quoted above, from the Ava- 
lanche, comes the following blasphemous decla- 
ration : 

" The Almighty has drawn the line on this continent 

ON ONE SmE OF WHICH THE SOIL MUST BE CL^LTIVATEn 

BT SLAVE LABOR. That line did not run on thirty-six 
degrees and thirty minutes, for thirty-six degrees and 
thirty minutes runs over mountains and through val- 
leys. But this slave line meanders in the sugar fields 
and plantations of the South— [the remainder of the 
sentence was lostbv the confusion aroimd the reporter.] 
And the people living in the different localities and in 
the Territories must determine for themselves whether 
their 'middle bed' is best adapted for slave or free la- 
bor." 



HE GOES FOR A SEDITION LAW. 

On the 23d of January, 1860, Mr. Douglas 
made his famous speech in favor of a new Sedi- 
tion Law, for the purpose of *' suppressing the 
h-repressible conflict." Senator Mason had al- 
ready introduced a resolution for the appointment 
of a Select Committee to investigate the John 
Brown raid at Harper's Ferry, and to report 
"whether any further legislation was necessary in 
the premises. Nevertheless, Mr, Douglas intro- 
duced the following additional resolution : 

" Eesolved, That the Committee of the Judiciary be 
instructed to report a bill for the protection of each 
State and Territory of the Union against invasion by 
the authorities or inhabitants of any other State or Ter- 
ritory; and for the siippression and punishment of 
conspiracies or combinations in any State or Territory 
with intent to invade, assail, or molest the government, 
inhabitants, property, or institutions of any other 
State or Territory of the Union." 

Upon this resolution he made a speech, on 
the 23d of January, as aforesaid, from which the 
following are consecutive extracts : 

" The question, then, is, what legislation is neces- 
sary and proper to render this guarantee of the Consti- 
tution effectual ? I presume there will be very little 
difference of opinion that it will be necessary to place 
the whole military power of the Government at the 
disposal of the President, under proper guards and re- 
strictions against abuse, to repel and suppress inva- 
sion when the hostile force shall be actually in the 
field. But, sir, that is not sufficient. Such Legislation 
would not be a full compliance with this guarantee of 
the Constitution. The framers of that instrument 
meant more when they gave that guarantee. Mark the 
difference in language between the provision for pro- 
tecting the United States against invasion and that for 
protecting the States. When it provided for protect- 
ing the United States, it said Congress shall have pow- 
er to ' repel invasion.' When it came to make this 
guarantee to the States it changed the language and 
said the United States shall • protect ' each of the 
States against invasion. 

" Then, sir, I hold that it is not only necessary to 
use the military power when the actual case of inva- 
sion shall occur, iDut to aiUhorize the judicial depart- 
ment of the Government to suppress all conspiracies 
and combinations in the several States with intent to 
invade a State, or molest or disturb its government, its 
peace, its citizens, its ^j?'0/;er^y, or its institutions. 
You must punish the conspiracy, the combination tvith 
intent to do the act, and then you will suppress it in 
advance. 

******* 

" It cannot be said that the time has not yet arrived 
for such legislation. It is only necessary to inquire 
into the causes which produced the Harper's Ferry 
outrage, and ascertain whether those causes are yet in 
active operation, and then you can determine whether 
there is any ground for apprehension that the invasion 
will be repeated. Without stopping to adduce evidence 
in detail, I have no hesitation in expressing my firm 
and deliberate conviction, that THE HARPER'S FER- 



ry crime was the natural, logical, inevi- 
table result of the doctrines and 
teachings of the republican party, as 
explained and enforced in their plat- 
form, their parttzan presses, their pam- 
phlets and books, and especially in the 
speeches of their leaders in amd out of 
Congress. 

******* 

" And, sir, inasmuch as the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States confers upon Congress the power coupled 
with the duty of protecting each State against external 
aggression, and inasmuch as that includes the power 
ot suppressing and punishing conspiracies in one State 
against the institutions, property, people, or govern- 
ment of every other State, I desire to carry out the poiver 
vigorously. Sir, give us a law as the Constitution con- 
templates and authorizes, and I will show the Senator 
from New York that there is a constitutional mode of 
repressing the 'irrepressible conflict.' I to ill open 
the prison door to cdlow conspirators against the peace of 
the Bepublic and the domestic tranquillity of our States 
to select their cells wherein to drag out a miserable life, 
as a punishment for their crimes against the peace of 
society ! ! ! 

"Can any man say to us that although this outrage 
has been perpetrated at Harper's Ferry, there is no 
danger of its recurrence ? Sir, is not the Republican 
party still embodied, organized, confident of success, 
and defiant in its pretensions ? Does it not now hold 
and proclaim the same creed that it did before the in- 
vasion? It is true that most of its representatives 
here disavow the act of John Brown at Harper's Ferry. 
I am glad that they do so ; I am rejoiced that they have 
gone thus far : but I must be permitted to say to' them 
that it is not sufficient that they disavow the act, un- 
less they also repudiate and denounce the doctrines 
and teachings which produced the act. Those doctrii.ci) 
remain the same ; those teachings are being poured 
into the minds of men tlnoughout the country by 
means of speeches and pamphlets and bookis, and 
throngh partizan presses. 

'•Mr. President, the mode of preserving peace is 
plain. This system of sectional warfare must cease. 
The Constittttion has given the power, and all we ask 
of Congress is to give the means, and we, BY INDICT- 
MENT AND CONVICTIONS IN THE FEDERAL 
COURTS OF OUR SEVERAL STATES, WILL MAKE 
SUCH EXAMPLES OF THE LEADERS OF THESE 
CONSPIRATORS AS WILL STKIKE TERROR INTO 
THE HEARTS OF THE OTHERS, AND THERE 
WILL BE AN END OF THIS CRUSADE."— C'or^^. 
Globe, 1859-60, pages 552, 553. 

The following is an extract from the old Sedi- 
tion Law of 1798, which very nearly revolution- 
ized the country — utterly ruined and destroyed 
the Federal party which took the responsibility 
of enacting it — and against which Thomas Jef- 
ferson and his friends fulminated the famous 
"Resolutions of '98," adopted by the Virginia 
and Kentucky Legislatures : 

" And be it further enacted. That if any person shall 
write, print, utter or publish, or shall cause or procure 
to be written, uttered or pitblished, or shall knowingly 
or willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering 
or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious wri- 
ting or writings, against the Government of the United 
States or either House of the Congress of the United 
States, or the President of the United States, with in- 
tent to defame the said Government, or either House 
of the Congress, or the said President, or to bring 
them, or either of them, into contempt or disrepute, 
or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the 
hatred of the good people of the United States, or to 
stir up sedition within the United States ; or to excite 
any tmlawful combinations therein, for opposing or 
resisting any law of the United States, or any act of 
the President of the United States, done in pursuance 
of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the 
Constitution of the United States ; tlien such person, 
being thereof convicted before any court of the United 
States having jurisdiction therein, shall be punished 
by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by 
imprisonment not exceeding two years." 

The difference between this Sedition LaAv and 
the one advocated by Mr. Douglas is, that the 
former sought to punish the expression of opin- 
ions against the constituted authorities of the 
United States, while the latter seeks to punish 
the expression of opinions against human slavery. 
Under Douglas' proposed law, Washington, Jef- 



14 



ferson, Franklin, Madison and nearly all the 
founders of the Republic, would be liable, if still 
living, to •' indictments and convictions in our 
Federal courts." 



THE UPSHOT OP JOHN BROWN'S INVASION OF 
VIRGINIA, 

This is a proper place to inquire what state of 
facts existed, calling for Mr. Douglas' furious 
onslaught on the people of the North, and his 
malignant proposition to " open the prison doors 
and allow conspirators against the tranquillity of 
Slates to select cells wherein to drag out a mis- 
erable life." The Select Committee of the 
Senate, appointed to investigate the Harpers' 
Ferry affair, consisting of Messrs. Mason, Davis, 
Fitch, Collamer and Doolittle, comme!i€ed their 
labors on the IGth of December, 1859, and con- 
tinued their sessions until the 14tli of June, 1860. 
During this time they examined thirty-two wit- 
nesses from various parts of the country, and it 
is presumed they arrived at the facts of the case 
as nearly as it was possible to reach them. On 
the 15th of June, the majority of the Committee 
made a report, in which they say : 

" The Committee, after much consideration, are not 
prepared to suggest any legislation which, in their 
opinion, woiild"he adequate to prevent like occurrences 
iai the future. The only provisions in the Constitu- 
tion of the United States which woukl seem to import 
any authority in the Government of the United States 
to interfere on occasions aflfecting the peace or safety 
of the States, are found in the 8th section of the 1st 
article, amongst the powers of Congress, to provide for 
calling for militia to execute the laws of the Union, 
suppress insurrections and repel invasions ; and in the 
4th sectiou of the 4th article in the following words : 
' The United States shall guarantee to every State in 
this Union a repuhlican form of government,' and shall 
protect each of them against invasion, and on the ap- 
plication of the legislature, or of the executive (when 
the legislature cannot he convened), against domestic 
violence.' The 'invasion' here spoken of would seem 
to import an invasion by the public force of a foreign 
power, or (if not so limited and equally referable to an 
invasion of one State by another), still it would seem 
that public force, or force exercised under the sanction 
of acknowledged political power, is there meant. The 
invasion (to call it so) by Brown and his followers at 
Harper's Ferrv, was in no sense of that character. IT 
WAS SIMPLY THE ACT OF LAWLESS RUFFIANS 
UNDER THE SANCTION OF NO PUBLIC OR 
POLITICAL POWER," eic.—Eeport of Select Com- 
mittee of the Senate on the Harper's Ferry affair, page 
18. 

This report is signed, "J. M. Mason, Chairman, 
Jefferson Davis, G. N. Fitch." It ought to be 
good authority on the question whether any laws 
are required " to punish conspiracies and combi- 
nations with intent to do the act," as also on the 
other question whether the Republicau party is 
responsible for John Brown's raid. 



MR, DOUGLAS JUSTIFIES DISUNION. 

In the Sedition Law speech, above referred to, 
Mr. Douglas went so far as to justify the crime of 
disunion unless Congress should enact the sort 
of law which he there proposed. As he is now 
charging disunion quite furiously against the 
Brecl?:inridge faction, it is proper to show that 
less than one year ago he was encouraging the 
same thing himself. He said : 

" If the people of this country shall settle ^owa into 
the conviction that there is no power in the Federal 
Government to protect each and every State from vio- 
lence, from aggression, from invasion, THEY WILL 
DEMAND THAT THE CORD BE SEVERED and the 
weapons be restored to their hands with which they 
may defend themselves. THIS INQUIRY INVOLVES 
THE QUESTION OP THE PERPETUITY OF THE 
UNION.-'— C7wfir. Globe, 1859-60, i^as^e 552. 



JEFF, DAVIS REPUDIATES THE SEDITION LAW. 

Two days after the Sedition law speech, Sena- 
tor Davis took the floor and repudiated the wbole 
thing as an alarming encroachment on the rights 
of the people. He said : 

"I welcome, sir, the apprehensions of the President 
of the United States, and never would I enact a law 
which would clothe the executive with the power to 
call out the militia, to bring the army and navy TO 
INVADE A STATE TO DISCOVER WHO WITHIN 
THAT STATE HAD IN HIS BREAST THE PUR- 
POSE AT SOME FUTURE DAY TO COMMIT CRIME. 
If there be unlawful, treasonable organizations within 
a State, it belongs to the State sovereignty to inquire 
and to punish the offender. ***** 
It is proper for me, Mr. President, to say that it is in 
no feeling of partizan warfare between me and the 
Senator and the President, if any such exist, that I 
have made the explanation. It is the deep interest I 
feel for the preservation of sound principles and the re- 
striction of the Federal Government from striding 
over the sovereignties of the States to usurp such cen- 
tralizing power, under the promptings of a momentary 
expediency, as would destroy the great charter of our 
liberty, and reduce the people to that condition from 
which they rose— THE SUBJECTS OF A GOVERN- 
MENT NOT WITHIN THEIR CONTROL."— Co/ip'. 
Globe, 1859-60 ; pages 589, 590. 



MR. DOUGLAS TELLS WHAT POPULAR SOVER- 
EIGNTY " HAS DONE. 

It will be admitted that Mr. Douglas is a good 
judge of wliat his dogma of " Popular Sover- 
eignty " has accomplished during the past six 
years. Therefore, we let him tell the result iu 
his own words, quoting from his speech in the 
Senate on the IGth of May, 1860, as printed in 
the Appendix to the Congressional Globe : 

" But we are told that the necessary result of this 
doctrine of non-intervention, which gentlemen, by 
way of throwing ridicule upon, call squatter sovereign- 
ty, is to deprive the South of all participation in what 
they call the common territories of the United States. 
That was the ground on which the Senator from Mis- 
sissippi [Mr. Davis] predicated his opposition to the 
compromise measures of 1850. He regarded a refusal 
to repeal the Mexican law as equivalent to the Wilmot 
Proviso ; a refusal to recognize, by an act of Congress, 
the right to carry a slave there as equivalent to the 
Wilmot Proviso ; a refusal to deny to a Territorial 
Legislature the right to exclude slavery as equivalent 
to an exclusion. He believed at that time that this 
doctrine did amount to a denial of Southern rights, 
and he told the people of Mississippi so ; but they 
doubted it. Now, let us see how far his predictions 
and suppositions have been verified. I infer that ho 
told the people so, for as he makes a charge in his bill • 
of indictment against me, that I am hostile to Southern 
rights, because I gave those votes 

" Now, what has been the result? My views were 
incorporated into the compromise measures of 1850, 
and his were rejected. Has the South been excluded 
from all the territory acquired from Mexico ? What 
says the bill from the House of Representatives now 
on your table, repealing the slave-code in New Mexico 
established by the people themselves ? It is part of 
the history of the country, that under the doctrine of 
non-intervention, this doctrine that you delight to call 
squatter sovereignty, the people of New Mexico have 
introduced and protected slavery in the whole of that 
Territory. UNDER THIS DOCTRINE THEY HAVE 
CONVERTED A TRACT OF FREE TERRITORY IN- 
TO SLAVE TERRITORY MORE THAN FIVE TIMES 
THE SIZE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. UN- 
DER THIS DOCTRINE, SLAVERY HAS BEEN EX- 
TENDED FROM THE RIO GRANDE TO THE GULP 
OF CALIFORNIA, AND FROM THE LINE OF THE 
REPUBLIC OF MEXICO, NOT ONLY UP TO 36 deg. 
30 min., BUT UP TO .38 deg., GIVING YOU A DE- 
GREE AND A HALF MORE SLAVE TERRITORY 
THAN YOU EVER CLAIMED. In 1848 and 1849 and 
1850. you only asked to have the line of 36 deg. 36 min. 
The Nashville Convention fixed that as its ultimatum. 
I offered it in the Senate, in August, 1848, and it was 
adopted here, but rejected in the House of Represent- 
atives. You asked only up to 36 deg. .30 min., and 

NON-INTERVENTION HAS GIVEN TOU A SLAVE TERBITOEY 

UP TO .38 deg.— A DEGREE AND A HALF MORE 
THAN YOU ASKED ; and yet you say that thia ia a 
eacrifice of Southern rights I 



15 



"These are the fruits of this principle -which the 
Senator from Mississippi regards as hostile to the 
rights of the South. Where did you ever get any other 
fruits that were, more palatable to your taste or refresh- 
ing to your strength '? What other inch of free territory 
has been converted into slave territory on the Ameri- 
can continent, since the Revolution, except in New 
Mexico and Arizona, under the principle of non-inter- 
vention affirmed at Charleston. If it be true that this 
principle of non-intervention has conferred upon you 
all that immense territory; has protected slavery in 
that comparatively northern and cold region, where 
you did not expect it to go, cannot yoxi trust the same 
principle further South, when you come to acquire addi- 
tional territory from Mexico? If it be true that this 
principle of non-intervention has given to slavery all 
of New Mexico, which was surrounded on nearly every 
side by free territory, will not the same principle pro- 
tect you in the northern States of Mexico, when they 
are acquired, since they are now surrounded by slave 
territory; are several hundred miles further south; 
have many degrees of greater heat ; and have a climate 
and soil adapted to southern products ? Are you not 
satisfied with these practical results?" — Appendix to 
Cong. Globe, 1859-60, p. 314. 



HIS LAST FLING AT THE PEOPLE OF KANSAS. 

The Hon. John Hickman, in his late speech, in 
Concert Hall, Philadelphia, after a scathing re- 
view of Mr. Douglas' many crimes against free- 



dom in Kansas, says ; " It is gratifying, however, 
to make a single remark in his favor; it is this: 
that he seems as willing as the most ardent of his 
friends to divert attention from this period of his 
career. I am not aware that, in either essay or 
address, he has ventured to recur to it; baton 
the contrary, he seems disposed to treat as a 
blank in his life." Mr. Hickman has overlooked 
Mr. Douglas' speech in the Senate on the 29th of 
February last, when he repeated the most offen- 
sive and disreputable thing he ever said coiicer]i- 
ing the civil war in that Territory, It Avas thi.s : 

" Popular sovereignty in Kansas was stricken down 
by unholy combination'in New England to ship men to 
Kansas— KOWDIE3 and vagabonds— with the Bible in 
one hand and Sharpe's rifle in the other, TO SHOOT 
DOWN THE FRIENDS OF FREE INSTITUTIONS 
AND SELF-GOVERNMENT. Popular sovereignty in 
Kansas was stricken down by the combinations in the 
Northern States to carry elections under pretence of 
emigrant aid societies. In retaliation, Missouri form- 
ed aid societies, too ; and she, following your example, 
sent men into Kansas, and then occurred the conflict. 
I condemn both, but I condemn a thousand fold 
MOKE those that set the example and struck the first 
blov/ than those who thought they would act on the 
principle of fighting the devil with his orvn weapons^ 
and resorted to the same means that you have employ- 
ed."— Cons'. Globe, 1859-60 page 916. 



PART III.— MISCELLANEOUS. 



UNFRIENDLY LEGISLATION. 

The doctrine of '•' unfriendly legislation " 
against the rights of property, as declared by the 
Dred Scott decision, was promulgated by Mr. 
Douglas in his debate with Mr. Lincoln, at Free- 
port, on the 23d of August, 1858, as follows: 

The next question propounded to me by Mr. Lin- 
coln is, can the people of a Territory in any lawful 
way, against the wishes of any citizen of the United 
States, exclude slavery from their limits prior to the 
-formation of a Constitution ? I answer emphatically, 
as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer a hundred times 
from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the 
people of a Territory can, by lawful means, exclude 
slavery from their limits prior to the formation of a 
State 'Constitution. Mr. Lincoln knew that I had an- 
swered that question over and over again. He heard 
me argue the Nebraska bill on that principle all over 
the State in 1854, in 1855. and in 1856, and he has no 
excuse for pretending to be in doubt as to my position 
on that question. IT MATTERS NOT WHAT WAY 
THE SUPREME COURT MAY HEREAFTER DE- 
CIDE AS TO THE ABSTRACT QUESTION WHE- 
THER IT MAY OR MAY NOT GO INTO A TERRI- 
TORY UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, THE PEO- 
PLE HAVE THE LAWFUL MEANS TO INTRODUCE 
IT OR EXCLUDE IT AS THEY PLEASE, for the rea- 
son that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour any- 
where, unless it is supported by police regulations. 
These police regulations can only be established by 
the local legislature, and if the people are opposed to 
slavery they will elect representatives in that body who 
will, by unfriendly legislation, e3"ectually prevent the 
introduction of it into their midst. If, ou the con- 
trary, they are for it. their legislation will favor its 
extension. Hence, NO MATTER WHAT THE DECL 
SION OF THE SUPRE:\IE COURT MAY BE on that 
abstract question, still the right of the people to make 
a slave Territory or a free Territory, is perfect and 
complete under the Nebraska bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln 
deems my answer satisfactory on that point." — Lin- 
coln and Douglas Debates, page 95. 

Let the reader contrast these utterances with 
the Wickliffe resolution, adopted by the Douglas 
National Convention, and Mr. Douglas' letter of 
acceptance (page 10, ante). 



HE THINKS CONGRESS MUST DETERMINE WHEN 
POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY SHALL BEGIN IN A TER- 
RITORY. 

In his copyright essay published in Harper's 
Magazine last year, Mr. Douglas'substantially ad- 
mits the Republican doctrine concerning the rela- 
tion of Congress to the Territories, by saying : 

"It [sovereignty] can only be exercised WHERE 
THERE ARE INHABITANTS SUFFICIENT TO CON- 
STITUTE A GOVERNMENT, AMD CAPABLE OF 
PERFORMING ITS VARIOUS FUNCTIONS AND 
DUTIES— J[ FACT TO BE ASCERTAINED AND 
DETERMINED BY CONGRESS. WHETHER 
THE NUMBER SHALL BE FIXED AT TEN, FIF- 
TEEN OR TWENTY THOUSAND INHABITANTS, 
DOES NOT AFFECT THE PRINCIPLE." 

If the number may be fixed at ten, fifteen or 
twenty thousand inhabitants, it may of course be 
fixed at one hundred thousand or any other num- 
ber sufficient to constitute a Slate. 



MR. DOUGLAS' VIEWS OF NATIONAL PARTIES AND 
NATIONAL CREEDS. 

Since Mr. Herschel V. Johnson has been hooted 
down by a mob in his own State, and since the 
creed of the Douglas party has been tabooed in 
at least one-third of the States of the Union, it 
will be interesting to all persons to learn the 
views of nationality entertained by Mr. Douglas 
himself; and it is difficult to find a broader joke 
with which to conclude this pleasing compilation. 
We close by quoting from his speech at Cincin- 
nati, on the 9th of September, 1859, as reported 
in the New York Times of Sept. 12th: 

"ANY POLITICAL CREED IS RADICALLY 
WRONG WHICH CANNOT BE PROCLAIMED IN 
THE SAME FORM WHEREVER THE AMERICAN 
FLAG WAVES, OR THE AMERICAN CONSTITU- 
TION RULES." 



EVENING JOURNAL TRACTS, No. 18. 



The Issues of the Day. 



SPEECH 



OF 



WILLIAM M. EVARTS, 



OF ISTE^^ YOUK CITY, 



AT 



AUBURN, TUESDAY, OCT. 16, 1860. 



Mr. Chaibman and Fellow-Citizens — It is 
not with any expectation of saying or doing any- 
thing in the canvass for the party to which we 
are all attached and for the principles, the tri- 
umph of which we deem essential to the safety 
and true honor of our country, more than any 
other citizen who might be favored with your 
call to address you, that I now arise, and in the 
presence of this great multitude of sober and in- 
telligent electors of the State of New York to 
say as briefly as may be what seems to be perti- 
nent and important in the very stage of the can- 
vass which we have now reached. 

By the form of the Constitution one simple 
duty is now devolved upon the citizens of this 
country — that duty is the election of a President 
and Vice President, That is the extent and 
limit of our 3uty ; and yet a large part of our 
citizens seem to be engaged in anything but that. 
They seem to suppose that the question which 
was before the Convention of 1787, and which 
resulted in the formation of the Constitution un- 
der which we now live, is ever open to this peo- 
ple, and that is " What Government they shall 
have, and whether they shall obey it 1" Gentle- 
men, that question was settled for us, and it will 
remain settled long after we have passed from 
this stage. 

THE NOMINATING CONVENTION. 

Now, in preparation for the actual and practi- 
cal duties imposed by the Constitution, I need 
Dot say to you, that if the Constitution is to be 
maintained and upheld, it is to be by the per- 
formance faithfully and intelligently of the du- 
ties that are assigned to us under it, and their 



performance at the time and in the manner tha* 
the Constitution itself proposes ; and I say tha* 
in the preparation for the performance of that 
duty, various political parties have proposed for 
the suffrages of the citizens different candidates 
for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the 
United States. One Convention was held by the 
party to which you, for the most part, I take it, 
and I belong — the Republican party of the 
United States of America. In a Convention in 
which twenty- four States of Union were repre- 
sented, some partially, but still with twenty- four 
States, the Republican sentiment was fairly and 
honestly represented. They put in nomination 
for the suffrages of the people of the United 
States, dwelling wherever they may — in Maine, 
in Louisiana, in Georgia, in Michigan, in Oregon, 
or in California — Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, 
and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. [Applause ] 
They are before the whole people, and there is 
nothing in the organization of the party, nothing 
in the principles that we propose, nothing in the 
character or purpose, the political conduct or 
history of our candidates, that should not as 
readily, as properly, as fairly invite a suffrage 
from the banks of the Arkansas, from the 
banks of the Columbia, as from the banks of 
the Penobscot or the North River. [Applause,] 

Another political party representing in Con- 
vention twenty-five States, many of them frag- 
mentary, many of them with disputed, and some 
of them, it seems to me, with sham representa- 
tives, but yet counting twenty-five States in some 
form or other, has also put forth candidates be- 
fore the people. These are Judge Douglas, of 



Illinois, and Gov. Johnson, of Georgia. They, 
too, are thrown before the people, whose suffra- 
ges are asked in their snpport. 

Another Convention, representing in a some- 
what irregular form, but yet containing repre- 
sentatives of twenty diflferent States of the Union, 
has placed in nomination two other citizens of 
great distinction in the past political history of 
this country. They are Gov. Bell, of Tennessee, 
and Edward Everett, of Massachusetts; and 
they, with what antecedents, what principles 
they possess, with what they have done, whatever 
they have promised, are before the whole people 
for its choice. 

Another Convention, representing in some way 
or another by sham, substitute, fragmentary, or 
nominal delegation in respect of some, yet repre- 
senting nineteen States of the Union, have put 
in nomination Mr. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, 
and Gen. Lane, of Oregon, who are also before 
the people for their suffrages. And now the 
single question is, " Out of these candidates 
whom will ye choose to govern, under the Con- 
stitution, the people of all the States for the 
next four years V 

Now it strikes us, at first, as something quite 
different from the ordinary posture of a canvass 
for the Presidency, that there are so many tick- 
ets in the field, and as quite singular in the his- 
tory of all parties that in not one of these Con- 
ventions was there a representation of the whole 
33 States of the Union. In our own flonvention, 
as I have stated, there were 2i ; in the Douglas 
Convention, made up as it was, there were but 
25 ; in the Bell and Everett Convention, there but 
20 ; and in the Breckenridge and Lane Conven- 
tion there were but 19. This, gentlemen, teaches 
us upon distinct lines of fact, that are not to be 
disputed, that the sentiments of these people are 
divided in no inconsiderable degree upon sub- 
jects that are or were supposed to be connected 
with or involved in this canvass ; for the failure 
of regular antagonism between candidates, and 
of a fair and full collection of all the States of 
the Union, is an indubitable fact. 

WHAT THE REPUBLICANS INTEND DOING 

Now, gentlemen, there is one party which 
proposes to falfil its constitutional duty and to 
confine itself to its constitutional duty — to pro- 
ceed without disorder and without confusion, 
without disturbance of the public peace or threats 
of the public safety to the election of the can- 
didates that have been proposerl for their suf- 
frage. That party, I need not say to you, is the 
Republican party ; but I must say to you that 
so far as I can discover, all the other parties in 
this canvass are determieed that they will not 
perform that constitutional duty in reference to 
their candidates, and are determined that we 
shall not perform it for ours. I state to you as 
the distinctive feature of this Presidential can- 
vass, that, whereas, the duty is that a President 
shall be elected, and whereas, we propose to per- 
form that duty, all the politics, all the zeal, all 
the oratory, all the enthusiasm, all the promises, 
all the threats, all the hopes are that we should 
be prevented from choosing our candidates ; and 
that, so far as we can see, none of them propose 
to or expect to choose their own. Now, it is a 
little hard, gentlemen, that a party which quiet- 
ly, soberly and faithfully sets about doing that 
which, unperformed, strikes at the very founda- 



tions of a Constitutional Government — to per- 
form that duty which, failing to be performed, 
leaves our Government until the defect be sup- 
plied, without a chief magistrate upon whom 
depends the entire executive course of the Gov- 
ernment—that a party such as ours, and so situ- 
ated, I say it strikes me as hard that it should 
be stigmatized in all quarters as an enemy of 
the Constitution and the Union. It seems very 
odd to me that all these other parties that pro- 
pose to defeat the whole canvass and prevent 
the people from coming to a choice, should, on 
their various platforms on various pretences, 
claim for themselves the conduct and character 
of faithful servants of the Constitution and pro- 
tectors of the Union against us, the Republicans. 

THE QUESTION OF CONSTITUTIONALITT. 

Now, gentlemen, mark how the matter stands 
Upon what do they justify themselves in this 
course 1 That we are dangerous to the Govern- 
ment, and that our success threatens the Union 
and the Constitution ! What should be the way 
in which our opponents should act when a can- 
didate is put in nomination whose success threat- 
ens the dangers which they allege 1 What is 
the way to defeat him 1 Manifestly by putting 
in nomination against him a candidate whose 
character and whose principles will maintain the 
Union and uphold the Constitution. [Applause.] 
This is their duty. That is the theory of our 
Government — this is the plan for upholding it. 
Now, can they make the sensible portion of the 
United States believe that they dread the suc- 
cess of the Republican Party upon public 
grounds, and because of fear for the safety of 
the country, and they have not the patriotism, 
self-denial and largeness of views, to sacrifice 
personal interest and party success sufficiently 
to agree upon a man who can defeat the candi- 
date of the Republican Party 1 Why, if they 
could show us that by defeating our candidate 
before the people, they could at the next stage 
of a Constitutional election in the House of Re- 
presentatives be able then to agree upon a can- 
didate, and thus avert these dangers to the Con- 
stitution and the Union, we might put more faith 
and have more patience with these, their views. 
But when they get to the House of Represeita- 
tives, what they propose there is not to elect a 
President of the United States, which is the Con- 
stitutional duty there to be performed, but to 
prevent the Republicans, who there are the 
largest power in the suffrages of the States, 
from electing their candidates; and thus the 
Constitution is to be again defeated, a duty 
avoided ; and the tiuth is, gentlemen, that they 
propose to carry on this entire controversy for 
these great offices against the Constitution, 
against the Union, and so far as their action 
goes, their success will be in the fact that for 
first time in the history of the country no Presi- 
dent of the United States will have been elected 
anywhere. [Applause.] 

Now, this is literally true. The whole scheme 
and plan is absolutely to defeat both plans of the 
Constitution for the election of a President, and 
then in the Senate where no President ever can 
be, or ever was intended to be, or ever by the 
Constitution was proposed to be elected, they 
shall elect a Vice-President, turn him into a 
President by operation of the law. [Applause.] 
Gentlemen, which of these opposing forces (for 



tliere are three parties on one side and one on 
tlie other) understands the Constitution and 
their duty, and which of them proposes to ful- 
fill it ^ 

THE GREAT IBSIJES INVOLVED. 

Now, in every canvass for the Presidency 
•while the suflfrage remains free, and no power 
overawes the exercise of it on the part of the 
citizen, there must be involved to secure the at- 
tention of our vast population, and to attract 
their confidence and their votes to the one side 
or the other, some great sentiment, or some 
great interest that shall be disseminated, spread 
and enforced upon the popular mind to divide 
the country, and so by the major voices to carry 
into power one or the other of the parties es- 
pouging one or the other of these sentiments. 
This sentiment to be available for the purposes 
of a Presidential canvass, must be something 
that is vital to the Constitutional Government 
under which we live, and as extensive as the 
people whose suffrages are to determine the 
question. No local matters have a proper place 
in the Presidential canvass — no State interests 
force themselves upon the attention of the peo- 
ple so as to disturb or be of any use in the can- 
vass for the Presidency. We inherit the idea 
from our British ancestry, that with every gene- 
ral election for Parliament, whatever the pur- 
poses of the party may be, they must go to the 
country upon some vital interest of the British 
Constitution. 

Now, these are two great sentiments to which 
the hearts of the people always have responded 
— to which they will respond in this canvass — to 
which, I trust, they will always respond while 
we are a nation, and neither our prophetic nor 
our imaginative vision carries us beyond that 
time. They are the two great sentiments of lib- 
erty, to which we owe our birth as a nation, 
which shines in every line of the Declaration of 
Independence, the great statute of our national 
existence. The love of liberty pervades the peo- 
ple, and, touched by that chord, it throws on the 
one side or the other of it the opposing parties, 
and who rallies in the loudest and clearest tones 
for liberty, will be likely to carry the day. But 
there is another sentiment which, as well as this 
one I have named., forms the spirit of the peo- 
ple ; there is another sentiment which is called 
home in this pressure upon the consciences, the 
feelings and the intelligence of the people, and 
th'a.t is what relates to the actual body politic, 
the national life, the Constitution of our liberties 
in the form and frame of the American Union. 
That is a sentiment which never can be, and ne- 
ver shall be disparaged in any canvass with 
which you or I, or any Republican, has aught to 
do. For, if liberty be the inspiring spirit of our 
national life, the Union is the bodily frame of 
that life itself, and without it we have no coun- 
try. It matters but little to us whether our free, 
happy, powerful and prosperous national life, 
suffers its death-blow from a wound inflicted up- 
on liberty, or from a wound inflicted upon the 
national frame of the Gouernment. Poland, dis- 
membered, equally with France, imperialized, 
has lost its national life. While we contend for 
the one sentiment with greater ardor, as it seems 
-exposed, let us never doubt, — let us never fail to 
admit, that with a nation which comes to its end 
When its frame is destroyed, whether the soul of 



liberty be separated from the body of its Consti- 
tution, or the body of its Constitution be dissev- 
ered and dismembered, so that liberty can no 
longer inspire and more it, national death and 
destruction are equally the result. Accordingly 
we shall find, gentlemen, that in these great agi- 
tations of an intelligent and free people, which 
form the working forces of a Presidential can- 
vass, one or the other of these great sentiments 
is sought to be availed of for party success ; I do 
not say dishonestly, — sometimes honestly, some- 
times otherwise, for sometimes there is an enor- 
mous gap in the process of reasoning which sug- 
gests that certain principles will be promoted by 
the election of a certain candidate. When you 
see in a little petty town election, over a petty 
poll booth, that widespread premise and this 
mean conclusion ; that "' all the friends of the 
Union and the Constitution will vote for John 
Smith for Constable," you sometimes conclude 
that there is, possibly, a gap which may excuse 
a friend of the Constitution and the Union from 
voting for Smith. [Laughter.] But, neverthe- 
less, some connection is to be preserved, and you 
must judge, and the people do judge, whether in 
the watchword and promises of a party, there is 
a fair and reasonable association with the suc- 
cess of the candidates. Look at the various 
parties that are before the people. I will state 
with candor, and certainly with no intention to 
impute wrong sentiments, my views of the vari- 
ous parties, and I do say that we find arrayed in 
those mottoes and watchwords, sentiments which 
define and fairly represent the objects and pur- 
poses, the moving and controlling feelings that 
actuate the parties now before the people, 

THE TRUE ABOLITION PARTY. 

There is a small party which I have not yet 
named, and which has its candidate before the 
people — a party which seems wholly devoted to 
the inspiration of the single idea of liberty, and 
which seems to me to have failed in a true, 
courageous comprehension of the duty of Ameri- 
can citizens in this behalf. I am sure I don't 
know precisely by what name this party is call- 
ed now ; sometimes it has been called the " Lib- 
erty;" by its opponents it has generally been 
called the " Abolition Party, and sometimes the 
" pure Anti-Slavery Party." Gerrit Smith, I be- 
lieve, is its candidate for the Presidency. Now 
I am inclined to think that, so absorbing, so 
controlling, has this party regarded the senti- 
ment of Liberty as running through even the ab- 
ject class of our population, in certain States of 
our Union, they really do give it predominance 
and preeminence over the sentiment of Union ; 
and that, if they could have their own way, and 
had to choose whether they would carry on to 
its final triumphant success, this principle of 
Liberty at the sacrifice of the Union itself, they 
would be obliged fairly to say that Liberty or 
Disunion was the feeling and hope of their 
hearts. I don't criticise the sentiment. It is an 
honest, manly and brave sentiment, and when- 
ever honest, manly and brave sentiments are 
avowed and enforced before this people by the 
fair arts of public influence, I have not a word to 
say against them, nor a frown to give to their 
supporters. I think, however, that the mem- 
bers of this party fail of their duty. They do 
not, perhaps, love liberty too much, but they do 
not appreciate the fact that the Union is at the 



bottom of liberty, all that we have or may have, 
and that that liberty which cannot be promoted 
in the Union cannot be promoted ont of it. [Ap- 
plause.] 

THE SOUTHERN DISUNION PARTY 
There is another party which, I am bound 
to say, has given so unfortunate, and, as it seems 
to me, so monstrous a perversion to the senti- 
ment of liberty, that it is willing to adopt, and 
really does feel the sentiments expressed by the 
motto or watchword : " Slavery or Disunion." 
This party has for its candidates Breckecridge 
and Lane. Now, gentlemen, here is a party 
that discards and tramples on these two sacred 
sentiments alike. So absorbed is it in the spe- 
cial interests of property — or let them call it 
what they choose, I have selected their own no- 
menclature, — that they will advance it before 
and beyond either of the sentiments, " Liber- 
ty " or " The Union of the Stales." And they 
give us the proposition, I think, by their orators, 
by their political courses, by their platforms, 
and by their conduct generally, to understand 
that they now give in their adhesion to the in- 
terests of Slavery so far, so vehemently, and so 
exclusively, that if in their plans, their hopes 
and their sentiments be not adopted by ths 
American people, and confirmed by the suf- 
fraofes of the voters of the country, thus failiDg 
of Slavery's prosperity and advancement, they 
will take disunion and its consequences. 

THE DOUGLAS PARTY. 
Now, there is the Douglas Party at the south 
and the north, which gives such a predomi- 
nance to the sentiment of Union, and yet ad- 
hering to this great interest of Slavery which 
is in our politics. It may be said that they 
shape their formula in this wise : Slavery and 
Union ; that is to say, not that they prefer Sla- 
very, but that the Union is a sentiment so strong 
and Slavery an interest so strong, that they 
have not the courage, the faith, the reliance 
upon free principles suflficient to lead them to 
adopt more devotion even to the Union, and that 
Union and Slavery be voted up or down — to live 
and thrive, or dwindle nnd decay— as may be, 
in their contrivance for the safety of the coun- 
try. 

THE BELL AND EVERETT PARTY. 
There is a party which is represented by the 
respectable candidates — Messrs. Bell and Ever- 
ett — which, at least in the Free States, does not 
seem to put itself upon the same footing in 
these regards as the Douglas Party ; though, so 
far as I can discover, the same political organi- 
zation in the Slave States seems to have about 
the same sentiment of Slavery and Union, with- 
out Slavery or Disunion, and yet not coming to 
any higher standard than Slavery and Union. 
This party in the Free States, represented by 
Messrs. Bell and Everett, so far as I can see, is 
so absorbed and so subjugated to this sentiment 
of Union— a wise and patriotic sentiment cer- 
tainly, when not pushed to extravagance — that 
it is willing to put itself upon a footing of poli- 
tical servility to the institution of Slavery. Will 
it adopt, will it vindicate, will it espouse, as its 
choice and preference, for the sake of Union and 
what it deems peace, harmony and quiet, poli- 
tical servility, and surrender those free and spon- 
taneous sentiments which all free men feel on 



this subjects But "political servility and 
Union " are what they are willing, in substance 
and effect, to present for the good of the coun- 
try, and it is the best which they, at this junc- 
ture, can do. 

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY. 

Now, gentlemen, the Republican Party, in my 
judgment, is ready to take hold with confidence, 
with firmness, with energy and with faith in the 
people and the principles of our fathers, of the 
two great sentiments, that divide sometimes, but 
really should always unite the parties of the 
American people, and to inscribe as the legends 
of its banners in this controversy, " Liberty and 
Union now and forever, one and inseparable." 
[Applause.] Do we flatter ourselves or dispa- 
rage our opponents in this distribution and divi- 
sion of these great sentiments that are our com- 
mon birthright 1 I know that Republicans are 
for liberty and for the Union ; I know that they 
ask no greater liberty and no greater power for 
themselves in the regions of our country where 
they live than they are willing to accord to their 
fellow men in every portion of our fair land. 
[Applause.] I know that it is a prevalent, fer- 
vent and predominant sentiment of the Repub- 
lican heart, that when we get outside of that 
natural feeling which we give to our birth-place, 
when we get outside of that allegiance which 
we owe to that political community known as 
the State in which we were born and in which 
we live — outside of that circumscription which 
nature and political duty draw closely around 
us. I know that there is not a Republican 
within the sound of my voice that does not re- 
joice in, and hope for, and plan for, and work 
for, under these life-giving sentiments of " Lib- 
erty and Union," the good of Alabama and 
Louisiana as much as for the good of Vermont 
or Michigan. [Applause.] 

Our sentiments are not sectional. The life 
that we draw from them will be communicated 
to every portion of our land, wherever those 
portions of our land are ready to imbibe their 
life-giving influence. And we will disseminate 
them ; we will uphold them ; we will maintain 
the conflict in favor and for the good of all parts 
of the country. 

THE "ONE IDEA" CHARGE, 

It is said, gentlemen, that the Republican 
Party, if represented rightly by this sentiment 
of liberty, and this love of Union, is a " one- idea 
party. There is but one duty confided to us in 
this canvass, and that is the election of a Presi- 
dent and Vice-President, and that duty per- 
formed, we shall have performed our obligation 
to the Constitution of the United States. But 
let us see whether we are a " one-idea " party, 
and whether it is a reproach. If it be founded 
on an idea, it is an idea large enough, when di- 
vided up, to furnish the antagonistic principles 
of three other parties. [Laughter.] That is 
something in size and bulk for an idea. Is it 
then to be objected to that it has not an idea 
that is in the people's heads and hearts 1 Gen- 
tlemen, who make parties, platforms, and com- 
binations, and who furnish sentiments 1 One 
would suppose that they were made to order by 
some superior power, and were let down upon 
the people to be adopted under the direction of 
leading politicians. The people have the ideas 



and the sentiments, out of which moral forces 
and politics are directed and controlled. [Ap- 
plause.] And when a party on one side, or on 
the other, has the ideas and the sentiments that 
the people have in their heads and hearts, it has 
enough for that canvass. Some of onr respect- 
able friends, who don't like agitation, are con- 
stantly asking us, "Why will you divide the 
people on the question of Slavery 1 Why don't 
you divide them upon something that they all 
agree about '?" [Laughter.] 

This is all childish nonsense, and he who 
thinks that he can by whistling raise the wind to 
carry his craft across the Atlantic, will think 
that in political juntas yon can agree to sup- 
press a sentiment or an idea, and get up some 
other for popular use. So much for that. But 
the idea is a large one, and it is connected in- 
separably with these two sentiments of our love 
of country and our love of liberty, and, there- 
fore, the purposes and principles of the Re- 
publican Party do rightly invoke these united 
sentiments. The idea, gentlemen, is that Slavery 
whether it be good or bad, politic or pernicious, 
is local, and that free labor is the national basis 
upon which we build up wealth and power. 
[Loud applause] Now that is the idea, audit 
is an idea large enough for any nation to have 
for a four years' canvass. [Applause.] 

SLAVERY LOCAL AND NOT NATIONAL. 

Let us see how this question arose — how much 
of fact, and fact that cannot be disfigured or kept 
out of view, there is in it, and about which all 
must agree. The great fact is, gentlemen, that 
the population of our country includes within 
its bosom four millions of persons of African de- 
scent. There is the fact. No Southern states- 
man or politician can disguise it ; no Northern 
statesman can icfiaence or pervert it. Here 
they are. What have we to do about them 1 I 
mean " we" as a nation — you and I in our po- 
litical duties, not in our philanthropy, with our 
sympathies or our moral and religious influences; 
but what have we to do with the fact politically, 
in our duty as citizens under the Federal Consti- 
tution 'i That is the question that divides the 
country. 

In the first place, gentlemen, these blacks are 
for the most part in the condition of Slavery. 
They have derived that condition, and it is main- 
tained over them by the force of the laws of the 
separate S&ates in which they live. I need not 
say to yon, gentlemen, that we should have no 
confusion of ideas about what Liberty and Slav- 
ery are. They have nothing msgical about 
them. The difference between them, wide and 
deep as it may be, exists wholly by positive law. 
Why are we free 1 Why do we call ourselves 
free 1 Wi at do we mean by freedom, except 
that we live in communities whole laws leave us 
free, as God made us, deducting only that small 
contribution from individual liberty which is ne- 
cessary for the common right and the common 
safety % It is in our laws, —in our magistrates 
who protect those laws, — in the processes of 
those laws which which give to the feeblest the 
support of the whole community in defence of 
his rights, — that we are freemen. Sir James 
Mcintosh, than whom there never was a clearer 
thinker in these matters, defines liberty as a 'se- 
curity against wrong." That is liberty. Think 
it over as to what is your condition of liberty. 



It is security against wrong. "-^Tou are permitted 
to work out your sentiments and the purposes of 
your nature, as an individual, against wrong and 
oppression, ^ow, Slavery — Slavery is a word 
that trips lightly on the tongue, but Slavery is 
nothing but the local condition in which the 
Slaves are, by power of the Government under 
which they liv^ and which controls tbem ;— and 
perhaps as ready and complete a definition of 
Slavery as has yet been given would be the con- 
verse of the definition of Liberty. Slavery, gen- 
tlemen, in essence, in practical abjectness and 
misery, is helplessnejs against wrong, [applause] 
and that is the legal condition in which it is 
placed in the communities where it is cherished 
and maintained as a social institution. I need 
not say to you that, as a political duty, we have 
nothing to do with the passing of the laws in 
States where Slavery exists — and that ends that 
subject. Where, then, does the conflict srise 
which causes this diversity of sentimett and this 
conflict of political action'? Why, when this 
black population is to overflow the bounds of 
these separate independent States, by the laws 
of which its condition is fixed, then it becomes 
a question for those into whose territories it 
flows to say what shall be done with it ; and if 
it overflows into the territories of the United 
States of America, then you and I and every 
citizen has a political responsibility and a politi- 
cal duty, because then it is beyond State juris- 
diction, and is within the jurisdiction of the 
United States of America. And as it is a con- 
dition that it must have the support of the law 
to exist in fact, it must be governed and regulat- 
ed by the laws of the Government having juris- 
diction — even the Territories into which it over- 
flows. Thus, you and I, in common with the 
citizens of Alabama and Missouri, of Massachu- 
setts and Illinois, have our say, our opiniors, our 
votes, our action and our principles upon the 
subject. Now, can any one gainsay this 1 Gen- 
tlemen, as I have said, the idea being that Slav- 
ery is local, and not national, the monoent you 
remove, or attempt to remove this African popu- 
lation out of the States in which tbey are held in 
bondage, into your Territories, under your Gov- 
ernment, under your law3, whether that popu- 
lation shall be held in Slavery, — kept in the con- 
dition of helplessness against wrong, or whether 
that population comes in the Territory to be lift- 
ed into freedom and protected by security 
against wrong, is precisely the duty and the ac- 
tion that you must meet, whatever the conse- 
quences, under your duty to the Constitution 
and in maintenance of your share of the citizens' 
protection and defence of the Government. 

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 

Now this conflict has been said to be irrepres- 
sible, and various authors of this doctrine of the 
irrepressibility between the interests of slave la- 
bor and of free labor have been brought before 
the notice of the people. Gov, Seward was re- 
proached with having in 1858 invented this do - 
trine of an " irrepressible conflict." Since that 
time Mr. Lincoln has been put forward as the 
candidate of the Republican Party, and so that 
reproach, if it be a reproach, as our opponents 
intended it, has been transferred to Mr. Lincoln, 
and they say that he, two years earlier than 
Gov. Seward, was the author of that doctrine. 

Well, gentlemen, I happen to have a little ex- 



tTa3t from a newspaper which will showgyou an- 
other origin for this doctrine of the "irrepressi- 
ble cocflict " between the forces of slave and 
free society. The Richmond Enquirer, before 
Seward and before Lincoln, set down this propo- 
sition — 

" The opposite and coBfiicting forms of eociety can- 
not, among civilizad men, coexist and endure. The one 
must give way and cease to exist -the other become 
universal If free society be unnatural, immoral and 
unchristian, it must fall and give way to slave eociety— 
a socia.l system as old as the world, as universU as 
man." " [Laughter.] 

And we take that issue. If free society is 
'* unnatural, immoral and unchristian," which 
the Virginia editor says it is, then by the high- 
est duty to ourselves and to all men, we must be 
turned into slaves. There certainly is an " irre- 
pressible conflict " stated. 

Well, gentlemen, these may be called the ob- 
servers of this " irrepressible coEfllct" between 
the forces of slave labor and free labor — be- 
tween societies respectively built upon these two 
opposite systems ; the author of that conflict is 
He who mysteriously, framed this union of the 
body and the soul which constitutes the human 
race. [Applause.] For in the last analysis the 
difference between slave labor and free labor is 
this, that a power superior to the individual man 
seizes upon him, degrades his labor, stimulates, 
enforces, and employs all his energies which 
allies him with the brute, his muscles, his nerves, 
his power as of oxen and of horses, in the labor 
that the slave owner gets by tasks frcm his ab 
)cct dependants. Free labor is informed by man 
and directed by will. It is the application of 
the whole man by himseJf — the master of his 
own limbs by the intellect, the passions wir^h 
which Qdd has given him to rule his own body. 
And it is quite obvious that so long as there be 
these two methods, by one of which man is de- 
graded to the level of the brute, and his labor to 
the level of brute labor, and by the other he is 
the master of his own body, and is lifted up by 
his own effort into moral, intellec ual and social 
development and improvement, they ''cannot, 
(as the editor of the Richmond Etqairer says,) 
amcng civilized men, coesist and endure " [Ap- 
plause ] Let us see why. 

Let us see what are some of the trivial objec- 
tions which are made sometimes by honest-mind- 
ed men. " What is the objection," they say, 
'Hbat you free people of the North have to go- 
ing into a Territory and rcnning the forces of 
free society parallel with the system of slave la- 
bor V Why, the moral coufiict between them is 
utterly incompatible with the peaceful coezist- 
ence of the two together. I mean while they 
ran on as forces coLfltcting and striving for the 
mastery, for I admit that the actual condition of 
the slaves, when it is settled that the institution 
is to pass away, may temporarily be left subor- 
dinate to and be controlled by the great forces 
of free society. Why, gentlemen, jast take the 
two systems of the chaste Christian single mar- 
riage and that of polygamy — the system of one 
Boc ety which treats woman as an equal — the 
sharer of the heart of her husband, the mother 
or his children and the part of his household-— 
End the system of polygamy, that treats her as 
the slave of his passions and makes her subject 
to his caprices ; and then ask the free people of 
the North and the free people of the South (for 
in this question there is no difference of opinion 



between the two sections) what objection there 
is to polygamy occupying a Territory, and why 
they cannot go and live side by side with this 
institution. Gentlemen, nature is stronger than 
politicians. [Applause.] She Will have her own 
way. Now, practically, is not this sol How 
happens it that the overflowing population of 
the sterile soil and inclement climate of New 
England States, and of this and other Northern 
States, have in the earlier days, when the im- 
penetrable West imposed such barriers to the 
progress of civilization— how happens it, I ask, 
that that movement did not turn down into Vir- 
ginia, the Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia! The 
laws of our country extended over the whole ; 
the genial climate and fertile and prolific soil in- 
vited the industry of the free. Why did they 
not go there 1 Why did they shoot clear across 
the continent, as if there had been a wall of fire 
drawn on the northern boundary of Vjrginir , ? 
And why, not until they had occupied to the 
Pacific Ocean, did the returning wave seek to 
encroach upon the line of Territory that Slavery 
had claimed for its own 1 

Now, gentlemen, yon see that this is not a fie- 
titiou3 issue. It is a real issue. It is deep, per- 
manent, as necessary as the principles of human 
nature. You see that besides being a question 
of political duty and political right, in which we 
are concerned, it is a question whether our Ter- 
ritories shell be cultivated by free or by slave 
labor ; it is a question of vital importance to the 
overfiowing tide of our own population, because 
the presence of Slavery, as an established and 
centre lling institution, necessarily drives the free 
population away from the reach of it. 
THE CHARGES AOAINST THE REPUBLIC A.NS. 

And, gentlemen, it happens to be a little odd, 
with these sentiments, that the most extraordi- 
nary charges are made upon the Republican 
Party. Our fellow-citizers of the Slave States 
tell us, in justification of the system of Slavery, 
that it is the only system compatible with the 
co-existence of the same race in the same com- 
munity—that is, their co-ezistence in at all 
equal numbers. That may be. We do not dis- 
pute with them upon that point. But we say^ 
that being admitted, they cannot extend them- 
selves into the Territories of the United States^ 
and carry with them their black population, 
without having Slavery maintained and protect- 
ed. Well, our principles are opposed to the 
maintainance and protection of Slavery in the 
Territories. That we avow j that tbey complain 
of; but that they understand. Yet you will 
find in the organs of opinion in the Southern 
States, and in their organs having affinity with 
them in the Free States, they charge that the 
Hepublican Party is in favor of Africanizing 
America. The policy and principles of the Re- 
publican Party to keep slaves out of the Terri- 
tories, in the opinion of cur Southern friends, is 
to keep the African race cut of the Territoiies, 
while their principles wouid carry it in. And 
yet they say, and while they charge it in effect 
as a fault of ours, that our principles would fill 
the Territories with white people and would 
keep the slaves out, that we are in favor of Afri- 
canizing the Continent. The extension of the 
institution and of the population would be pro- 
moted and advanced by the policy and princS-^ 
pies of the parties which are opposed to us, and 
we who stop the tide cannot be accused of fa- 



voring the extension of that popnlation, [Ap- 
planse.] 

THE QUESTION OF SLAVE INCREASE. 
And here, gentlemen, I may notice a proposi- 
tion which has been nsed by many persons to 
soothe their own consciences for their indiflFer- 
©nce on the £ulject of Slavery, and that is, that 
the carrying of the institution of Slavery into 
new Territories does not increase the number of 
Slaves. They are opposed to increasing the 
number of slavps, but they say that the exten- 
sion of the institution does not increase the num- 
ber of slaves. [Laughter] A very respectable, 
intelligent gentleman, whom I ever desire to 
mention with honor, Mr. James T. Brady, the 
candidate of one of the divisions of the Dsmo- 
cratic Party for Governor of this State, in a pub- 
lic speech that he recently delivered suggested 
that idea. Why, gentlemen, what can be more 
abhorrent to the plainest principles of social 
economy than that the extension of the area over 
which a race is distributed does not tend to 
their increase. Whenever Mr. Brady will be of 
the opinion that the descendants of Irishmen are 
ao more in the world than they would have been 
if they had always been confioed within the 
limits of Ireland -, whenever we shall feel that 
there are no more descendants of Englishmen 
than if this wide Continent had not been open- 
ed to that population, but they had all been 
confined within the island of Great Britain ; 
whenever it shall be true that there are just as 
many Morgan horses in the world as if they had 
always been coe fined to farm- work in Vermont, 
and had not been distributed over the country 
for tbe Inxury of its population everywhere; 
whenever it shall be demonstrated that there 
would be just as many perch in the world if 
they had always been shut up in Owasco lake, 
and not distributed in rivers and lakes every- 
where, then I say there will be something in 
the idea that tbe extension of Slavery into Ter- 
ritories does not tend to increase the number of 
slaves. [Applause.] 

NEGRO EQUALITY. 
And now, gentlemen, there is another question 
which I desire to meet fairly and f qaarely, and 
that is the imputation against the Republicrn 
Party as favoring negro equality. I take it that 
the Republican i?arty, and that every man whose 
mind and nature has been developed by educa- 
tion ai^d Christianity, feels that because of the 
actual condition of feebleness, of ignorance and 
of degradation of anybody, he never gains any 
right, even by the weight of his little finger, to 
add to that depression and misfortune. [Ap- 
plause,] And I take it that it will he a long 
time before it will be a mark of nobility of spirit 
and manliness of character to add to the misfor- 
tunes and feebleness of the humble and distress- 
ed, [Renewed applause] I believe that it is a 
fundamental principle oi civilised society and 
the Christian religion, that as before the eye of 
God, so in the judgment of the law, all men who 
are men are to have equal rights of protection. 
Now, when I am making this suggestion about 
the Republican Party's notion of the equality of 
negroes, God forbid that any man should say 
that I, professicg, as I do, to speak with delib- 
eration, with circumspection, with a jnst regard 
of duty to myself and to you, should ever be 
quoted as opposed to that kmd of equality to 



the lowest and feeblest of the human race. But 
let us look a little at this subject of negro equal- 
ity from points of view which do not occur to 
our Southern friends. They do not complain 
that the law which excluded Slavery or slaves 
from the Territory would prevent white men 
from going there, except in a particular relation, 
to which I shall advert. So far, then, as whites 
are concerned, the white man who chooses to go 
alone from South Carolina, or from Alabama, or 
from Kentucky, would have just as good a chance 
under this principle of exclusion of slaves, as a 
man from Vermont, from Pennsylvania, or from 
Ohio, But they say we white men of the South 
catiuot go into a new Territory without our 
blacks carryiDg us. [Laughter.] And there is 
the difficulty. Now, which is the master of the 
situation and of the future of that mon — the 
white man or the black man who must carry 
himl [Laughter.] You remember how Benja- 
nain Franklin aided tbe difiosion of universal 
suffrage, when there was a property qualifica- 
tion which he wished to abolish, by a suggestion 
he made in regard to the property voting rather 
than the man. He says, " Yon require a man to 
possess $50 worth of property before he can 
vote." Now, to-day, a man professes himself to 
exercise the right of snflfrage. He is asked 
whether he has |50 worth of property. He 
says, " Yes — I have a jackass that is worth $50." 
He votes. Well, at the next election the man 
comes up again, but Ms jackass having died he 
cannot vote, " Now," as Dr. Franklin, " which 
was it that voted the year before, the man or 
the jackass 7" [Loud laughter, ] 

THE RELATIONS OF MASTER AND BL&VE. 

Now, gentlemen, pursuing the tenor of these 
suggestions, if in the Southern States they have 
a class of the population in subjection to whom 
the movement of the white people must be made, 
it is very easy to see that in certain mcst im- 
portant relations this population is the master of 
the movements of the whites. [Applause.] 

But again, they say, that in their estimation 
a mixed population of whites and slaves, as a 
unit, is a better population than an equal num- 
ber of people on one side of the line, all white. 
Well, gentlemen^ let us suppose there are 1.000 
white people forming a little community in the 
State of Ohio, and that on the opposite bank of 
the river, in Kentucky, there is another commu- 
nity made up of 500 ^^hites and 500 negroes j 
and this latter community, they say, is stronger, 
wiser, safer, and better community than the 
1,000 on cur side. Well, gentlemen, when some 
British officers were trying to excuse the defeat 
of one of their frigates by an American frigate 
having a smaller crew, the Eaglisfcman retorted 
by sayiDg that two thirds of the crew of the 
American ship were Englishmen and Irishmen. 
" Yea," said the American, " and it was with 
just the other third that made the difference." 
[Laughter.] Now^ take from the one commu- 
nity, of 1 000 white men, 500 white men, and 
you have 500 white men remaining Bat of the 
other community of 500 whites and 500 blacks, 
you take the 500 whites and you have 500 blacks 
remaining. It is that dilution of the black pop- 
ulation that they consider a larger and better 
element of society than an equal number of 
white people on one side. [Laughter.] That is 
not only negro equality but negro superiority. 
[Applause.] We submit to the argument with- 



out ill-catnre, because we are satisfied that it is 
quite the other way. 

Now, gentlemen, this subject of equality has 
been broached on the opposite side, by a very 
distinguished gentleman in the Democratic 
Party, a very eminent lawyer and a very close 
reasoner — I mean Mr. Charles O'Conor, He, in 
endeavoring to attract the attention, favor and 
support to the institution of Slavery from the 
people of the State of New York, put to them 
this proposition : *' The condition of Slavery at 
the South is precisely, in the eye of the law, the 
condition of your sons here, while they are under 
age ; the only diJBference between the lad of 20 
at the North and the slave at the South being 
that the lad is to be emancipated at the age of 
21, while the slave continues in the same condi- 
tion for life," This monstrous proposition, gen- 
tlemen, is not for me to dissect or to refute. Its 
absurdity is obvious ; but let me say to gentle- 
men, when they are using this reckless argu- 
ment, that it is just as much an assertion of the 
equality of condition to say that the white man 
is on the same level with the black as it is to say 
that the black is on the same level with the 
white. There is no difference in that respect. 

So you Fee, gentlemen, that none of these 
efforts to divert the public mind and the public 
attention from the real inquiry will avail any- 
thing. We are a political party. We act in our 
Federal relations within our political duty. We 
act upon the subject of Slavery within the Ter- 
ritories according to our notions of the safety and 
true development of our country. 

WHAT THE » IRREPEE3SIBLE CONFLICT" 
AMOUNTS TO. 

Now, there being this corflict, let us see who 
it is between. The ordinary phrase lor it is that 
it is between the North and the South Between 
the North aud South'? This " irrepressible con- 
flict" but the occupation of the territory by 
these contending tides of population 1 Well, gen- 
tlemen, there is great danger in generalities. 
What is the North 1 What is the South 7 Where 
is the line drawn 1 The phrases have no mean- 
ing in our political constitution. There are no 
such powers. It answered very well in geo- 
graphical description while the population of 
this country was confined to the margin of the 
Atlantic Ocean. But what has become of the 
division between the East and the West 1 We 
reach now from shore to shore of the two grea?. 
oceans of the world. We have the great Missis 
sippi Valley. We have a vast region of interior 
territory. Thence the division between the 
North and the South does not espress the con- 
flicting parties at all. Then they will say thai 
it is between the Slave States and the Free 
States, but that is not so. If it were so, why 
then, under our system of politics, which gives 
the predominance of Federal votes the power of 
determining the question, it would have been 
settled long ego : there are 120 votes from the 
Slave States and 183 from the Free States , and 
it is very easy to see that a conflict dividing the 
parties of the country by that line, would be very 
Bocn ended. 

No, gentlemen, these are cunning disguises by 
which this cotflict is sought to be made geogra 
phical, or sought to be circumscribed on the one 
side or on the other by the demarcation of Sta e 
lines. It is not so. The controversy is between 
the friends and supporters of Slavery in the 



United States of America wherever they are, and 
the opponents of that institution who regard ifc 
as dancerous and injurious to the common bene- 
of the country. [Applause.] That is it. You 
cannot gain the credit pf a great division of the 
country, or of great bodies ol States. Look at 
it. I take it that in our midst Mr. O'Conor is as 
great an advocate, promoter and defender of the 
institution of Slavery as Mr. Yancey, who lives 
in Alabama. I take it that Mr. Gushing, of 
Massachusetts, is as vehement, as turbulent, as 
obstreperous an advocate of Slavery as Mr. 
Toombs, of Georgia. I take it that Gov. Seward 
is no more fiery or no more bold an opponent of 
the extension of Slavery than Cassius M. Clay, 
of Kentucky^ [Applause] I take it that Mr. 
Everett betrays the hopes of freedom by his 
timidity in the very citadel of Boston, and that 
Winter Davis beats down the proud pretensions 
of Slavery in the city of Baltimore. [Loud 
cheers] Nay, St. Louis is to-day a more Re- 
publican city than New York ; and Baltimore 
considering its position, is as bold at least as 
Boston. [Applause.] Now let us understand 
how we are grouped. So, too, there are large 
classes of our population — the slave traders of 
our Northern ports— the merchants who fit them 
out — their crews, and all the hangers on of that 
interest—the great share of the bankers, the 
great share of the moneyed interests of the north- 
ern States— these are combined with the interests 
of the slaveholders in the support and mainte- 
nance of Slavery. A great many of the farmers, 
a great many of the honest, plain, poor but hardy 
mechanics of Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, 
Kentucy and Tennessee, are opponents of Slave- 
ry and Slavery extension, and they act and feel 
with the Republican party. [Applause,] 

The division is of sentiment and of opinion 
and not of sectioas, or of States. [Loud ap- 
plause.] Now, that being the division, you will 
perceive that whetber or not one sentiment t/r 
the other can mBka headway, develop itself 
and find speech and act politically for the 
furtherance of it in one or the other part of 
the country, must depend upon the laws, upon 
the habits and upon the feelings of the people. 
Thus here, as I have stated, distinguished men 
advocate Slavery openly and fairly. Mr. O'Con- 
or, to whom I have alluded, stated to a large 
New York audience that the question was, whe- 
ther Slavery was just or not — that if Slavery 
was JQSt, then they were right on their side- 
that if Slavery was unjust, then Gov. Seward 
and all his followers were right. He laid down 
the proposition to be enforced and accepted by 
us, that Slavery was just, benign and beneficent j 
that only those who were of that way of think- 
ing should sustain the Democratic Party, and 
that all of the opposite opinion were rightfully 
on the Republican side. Mr. O'Conor is a clear- 
thinkiDg, honest man, who utters his sentiments 
freely on these questions, and no one attempts to 
stop him from exercisipg his right of speech. 
Bat, how is in the Southern States? Do they 
enforce their views in the general way of argu- 
ment, suggestions, and fair and honest inflnence 1 
There was an humble mechanic, a man of Irish 
origin, who went to the State of South Carolina 
to work as a bricklayer in the capital of that 
State — I mean Thomss Powers. He ventured a 
suggestion that Slavery was not "jast," not 
'* benign," not " beneficent" — an honest opinion. 



doubtless, and one which he gathered from ob- 
servation. What were the arguments that were 
used with him to satisfy him that he ought to 
change his opinion 1 Why he was taken — ^he 
was beaten with many stripes until the blood 
ran; he was tarred, he was feathered, he was 
starved, he was insulted, he was hooted from 
the community ; and thus he was convinced, I 
suppose. [Laughter.] The stripes exhibited to 
him the manifest jastice of Slavery, the boiling 
tar exhaling the ordor of its benignity, and the 
feathers descending in gentle mantle of its bene- 
ficence. [A Voice — " Hit him again."] Now, 
Mr. O'Conor and Mr. Powers, running in diflfer- 
ent lines of reason and argument would very 
likely come to opposite conclusions. [Applause 
and laughter.] No, gentlemen, our Constitution 
makes our suffrage free— leaves it to be settled 
by honest argument— by all the arts of fair and 
honest influence ; and whenever the speech and 
the facts, the conduct and the character of the 
Republican Party can be made known in the 
communities that cherish and defend Slavery, 
you may rely upon it that there will be as many 
to uphold and defend free labor there as there 
are to defend and protect slave labor here. [Ap- 
plause and cheers.] 
THE PROMOTERS OF THE SLAVE TRADE. 
Another very cutting sarcasm that we suflfer 
from the voters of the States that have estab- 
lishd and now maintain Slavery, to uphold their 
favorite institution, and from the Democratic 
orators, too, is, that we are a hypocritical race ; 
that we are fond of money above every other 
thing, and trample, for gain- sake, our princi- 
ples under our feet ; that we fit out slave-traders ; 
that our merchants famish the means, the credit, 
and the insurance ; and they say : " Look now 
at the North, wlic'i professes to be opposed to 
Slavery, and yet furnishes the means for this 
abominable traffic." Well, there is no fusion. 
It is not the North that is opposed to Slavery ; 
it is the people, who have the sentiments of 
Freedom, who are opposed to Slavery ; and 
those who have not those sentiments are en- 
gaged in anything, if you please, that the law 
will tolerate, or that the law will wink at, in ad- 
vancement of Slavery, But let me ask that 
Democratic orator how many of thope people 
that he thus classifies and stigmatizes, does he 
suppose vote the Republican ticket 1 [Laugh- 
tsr.] Whenever Republicans are caught in the 
service of Slavery we shall hang our heads ! 
But when the orator who denounces our wick- 
edness, counts among the voters of his party, 
captain and crew, the owner and merchant, the 
banker and district attorney, the officers and 
marshal, and the whole concern engaged in 
prosecuting, promoting, defending, protecting or 
winking at the abomination, it is for them to 
cease their accusations. [Applause] 

THE QUESTION OF THE TERRITORIES. 

Now, gentlemen, after all, coming back to the 
Territories, the question is, are we planning, are 
we executiog any oppression on our fellow-citi- 
zens of the Southern States by maintaining the 
rights of free labor, and our proposition that the 
Territories shall be occupied by free laborers, by 
free citizens from Georgia, from South Carolina, 
from Massachusetts, from New York, and where 
not 1 That depends, it is said, upon the Consti- 
tution of the United States of America ; and the 



propositions of the different Platforms on this 
subject are put forth by the different parties to 
gain the adherence of the people. I will ask 
your attention first to the propositions of the 
different sections of the Democratic Party, and 
then to our own, saying first a word or two on 
the Platform of the Constitutional Union Party, 
which has given us no interpretation of the Con- 
stitution, and no views concerning it. It is a 
mistake to suppose that the Constitutional Union 
Party have confined themselves to declaring as 
their only sentiments, " The Union, the Consti- 
tution, and the enforcement of the Laws." They 
have gone further. They have said that it is 
the dictate of duty and patriotism to have no 
other sentiments at all. [Laughter.] None what- 
ever can we have except what are embraced in 
the formula, " The Union, the Constitution, and 
the enforcement of the Laws." Weil, "many 
men of many minds," and so long as Constitu- 
tions, Governments and Laws are open to con- 
struction and opinion, if you want us to know 
what your opinions are you must use some other 
phrase or terms than those which are common 
to us all — " The Union, the Constitution, and the 
enforcement of the Laws." [Applause J We all 
go in for that. [Applause.] 
Now, the Breckenridge Party say this : — 

That the Government of a Territory organized by an 
act of Congrees, is provisional and temporary ; and dur- 
ing its existence all citizens of the United States have 
an equal right to settle with their property in the Ter- 
ritory, without their rights either of person or property 
being destroyed or impaired by Congressional or Terri- 
torial legislation. 

That it is the duty of the Federal Government, in all 
its departments, to protect, when necessary, the rights 
of persons and property in the Territories, and wherever 
else its constitutional authority extends. 

Now, gentlemen, you will notice that there 
was the same indisposition with the framers of 
these resolutions to mention the word " Slave- 
ry " that is known to have prevailed with the 
framers of the Federal Constitution. They de- 
termined that it should not be used, and for the 
best of reasons. The abhorrence of Slavery, the 
estimate of it as a temporary, exceptional foreign 
institution, made our fathers to sedulously omit 
from the whole framework of the Constitution 
the name of Slavery and slaves, and the fear of 
an intelligent free people led the framers of the 
Breckenridge Platform to leave out the word 
Slavery, and to prevent it from peeping out in 
any line or syllable. It was only by covering 
up the question under the abstract idea of the 
rights of property that they could get a hearing 
and secure anything but the merest indifference 
and contempt for their suggestion that the Con- 
stitution of the United States created, protected, 
defended or required from Congress the crea- 
tion, the protection or defence of Slavery, 

Well, now if you will take the Republican 
ideas about what is property under the Constitu- 
tion, and what are persons under the Constitu- 
tion, we will have no difficulty in saying that it 
is the duty of the Federal Government to protect 
the rights of persons and property in the Terri- 
tories of the United States. 

What is the Republican doctrine about pro- 
tecting the right of property and persons in the 
Territories 1 The eighth section of the platform 
adopted at Chicago : — 

" That the normal condition of all the Territory of 
the United States is that of Freedom ; that as our Re- 
, pablican fathers, when tbey had abolished Slavery in all 



10 



ouf national territories, had ordained that * No person 
should be deprived of life, liberty or property, without 
due process of law,' it becomes our duty, by legislation, 
whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this 
provision of the Constitution against all attempts to vio- 
late it ; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a 
Territorial Legislature, or of any individual} to give 
legal existence to Slavery in any Territory of the United 
States," 

Now the Republican doctrine is that by the 
Constitution of the. United States slaves are per- 
sons and are not property ; that whenever they 
are named in that instrument they are so de- 
scribed as persons, and that in the spirit of our 
ancestors and in the records of their delibera- 
tions it is manifest everywhere that they would 
not admit into that Constitution even the word 
"servitude," much less "slavery," but only the 
word " service ;" and the only stringent clause of 
the Constitution is that which looks to the ren- 
dition of eecaped fugitives from service. But I 
do not hesitate to say that the Breckenridge 
proposition entirely fails in covering the institu- 
tion of Slavery because they put themselves up- 
on the general notion and name of property ; 
and the Constitution of the United States no- 
where, not in any line, not in any syllable, not 
by implication, not by possibility, stamps the 
character of chattel property upon men, to be 
protected, like bales of goods and hogsheads of 
sugar under the Federal jurisprudence as prop- 
erty. But if the Breckenridge proposition means 
to say that Congress and the Territorial Legisla- 
tures have no right to pass any laws impairing 
the rights either of person ox property, in the 
general and extensive sense in which they use 
it, I do not hesitate to say it is the sheerest non- 
sense in the world. I should like to know what 
the whole function and duty, what the whole 
province, what the whole scope of enactments 
and of legislation are but the subjects of persons 
and property 1 I should like to know what there 
is in New York to legislate about if it is not per- 
sons and property 1 I should like to know if the 
Government that governs cannot legislate about 
persons and property 1 Now, to say that the 
Congress of the United States and the Territo- 
rial Governments they create have sole sovereign- 
ty over the Territory, and yet cannot legislate 
about persons and property, why, in the name of 
Heaven, what can they legislate about 7 You 
must either have a Government or no Govern- 
ment. If you have got a Government, it can 
govern. Why do they not put the language so 
that it will read that though it is a Government, 
and can legislate about persons and property, it 
cannot legislate about slaves 1 Why don't they 
say that slaves are neither persons nor property, 
but are mixed up of both— or take some other 
dogma, by which to make some magical excep- 
tion of Slavery from the purview of legisb tion 'i 
It is a monstrous absurdity that a Government 
which rules a Territory does not include the do- 
minion over slaves and their relations as well as 
white men and theirs— that the Government of a 
Territory which by its laws and their adminis- 
tration in the course of justice may have every 
white man within it, cannot by any enactments 
alter the condition of a slave for a single hour 
or to a hair's breadth ameliorate his condition. 

SLAVERY SUBJECT TO THE CONTROL OF 
CONGRESS. 

We have a Government or we have not a Gov- 
ernment, and Slavery being a matter of positive 



law, is subject to the control of Congress. It is 
; in these generalities where lurks the fraud that 
i our opponents practice upon the intelligence of 
our people. The Douglas Platform is neither 
more nor less than this : — " Inasmuch as diflfer- 
ences of opinion exist in the Democratic Party, 
as to the nature and extent of the powers of the 
Territorial Legislature, and as to the Powers of 
Congress, under the Constitution of the United 
States over the institution of Slavery within the 
TevritOTies— Resolved, That the Democratic Par- 
sy will abide the decisions of the Supreme Court 
of the United States on the questions of Con- 
stitutional law." [Laughter,] 

Well, gentlemen, there is no objection to that. 
There is nothing Anti-Republican in that avowal. 
The Republican party not only leaves Slavery 
but all their rights about persons and property 
before the Supreme Court of the United States, 
when they come before that tribunal. So, you 
will see, that our friends have either not spoken 
explicitly, definitely and with frankness in the 
statement of their views, or else they have been 
unfortunate in the selection of a penman or the 
selection of words to express their meaning, for 
the Republican party accepts the United States 
Courts as the lawful expounders of their law in 
cases that come before them. And if Congress 
passes a law excluding Slavery from the Territo- 
ries and a slaveholder takes his Slaves there ; 
and if a Republican lawyer brings a writ of 
habeas corpus, and a Republican Judge says the 
Slave is free and you then go to the Circuit Court 
and the Republican Circuit Judge says also that 
the Slave is free ; and if you then go the Su- 
preme Court of the United States, and that 
Court says the law is unconstitutional and the 
Slave is not free, so long as the Government 
stands, so long aa the judgment in that case 
stands, it shall be respected, as it was in the 
Dred Scott case, which made Dred Scott a Slave 
until he fortunately died. But on the other 
hand, if Congress passes a law that Slavery shall 
be established in the Territories, passes a Slave 
Code and a slave is there held, and a Republican 
lawyer brings a suit of habeas corpus, and a De- 
mocratic Judge in that Territory says the law is 
constitutional, and the Slave is a Slave, and a 
Democratic Circuit Judge, on an appeal, says 
the same thing, and the Supreme Court of the 
United States says that the law is unconstitu- 
tional and that the Slave is a free man, then let 
the people submit to the Supreme Court of the 
States. [Applause.] This idea of law and jas- 
tice — reverence to law and justice being an ele- 
ment to bind the consciences of the good, and 
never an element strong enough to control the 
wicked passions of the bad — is a sentiment in- 
consistent with civil government and must be 
frowned upon every where. [Applause.] 

When the Supreme Court of the United States 
makes this judgment in favor of liberty, then let 
it be obeyed. Now, gentlemen, how does it 
happen that the Supreme Court is such a favor- 
ite repository for the settlement of the questions 
of Liberty and Slavery 1 If you will notice, you 
will see that the Democratic Party, or the slave- 
holder's party, has shifted a good deal as to 
where it would trust this question. In the first 
place, Congress was the place to determine 
whether Slavery should or should not exist in 
the Territories. Large Democratic majorities, 
subservient Northern constituencies, imshamed- 



11 



Ikced Northern Representatives, made Congress 
a safe depository for the question of Slavery, 
Bnt all at once the Republican sentiment found 
strength enough to express itself, and to control 
one branch of Congress, and then our Southern 
friends thought that Congress had no power 
over the question of Slavery in the Territories. 
[Laughter.] Not they ! The people of the Ter- 
ritories had the power under the " great princi- 
ple of Squatter Sovereignty " — the noble princi- 
ple of the people controlling their own institu- 
tions, and Kansas was just the place to try it 
Why did this principle suit Kansas ? Why, be- 
cause Kansas had a barrier of the Slave State of 
Missouri between it and freedom. The slave 
interest had free avenues to it for the overflow- 
ing dominion of Slavery, and they had violent 
men and violent passiocs, and wicked purposes, 
as power always has when it contends against 
right, and Squatter Sovereignty (not as Mr. 
Douglas now puts it, giving the sovereignty to 
the people when they are a grown-up communi- 
ty) meant, according to the pure Southern doc- 
trine, that the first comers settled the question 
of Slavery or no Slavery, because Missouri could 
get there sooner than New York or Massachu- 
setts. [Laughter,] That was all very well. 
But we are a free people, and we can move 
whether black men will carry us or not— [laugh- 
ter and applause — J and though South Carolina 
and Missouri got there first, Massachusetts and 
New York stayed there the longest. [Prolong- 
ed applause and cheers.] When, behold the 
change in the views of the slaveholding party — 
** Was there ever such an abominable doctrine," 
they said, " as Squatter Sovereignty 1 It leads 
to all manner of violence and irritation between 
honest populations, turning them into voters and 
fighters, when they ought to be plowing and 
tilling the fields ! How can American liberty 
stand the shock of Squatter Sovereignty V 
[Laughter.] But we told you so, gentlemen — 
we told you that Congress was the place to fight 
it out in words, where you could vote and we 
could vote, and the sober, honest people, who 
sent us, were waiting for the decision. We ask 
them to take the matter back before Congress. 
" Take it back ! — is is the unsafest and most un- 
constitutional place in the world ! [Laughter,] 
If you attempt to pass a law in Congress to abol- 
ish Slavery in the Territories, we will diesolv© 
the Union. The Supreme Court is the place." 
SLAVERY AND THE SUPREME COURT. 
Now, gentlemen, look at the unsleeping eye of 
Slavery— that great powerful interest which, 
while we, a free honest people, have been mind- 
ing our own business, satisfying ourselves by 
sending John Jones or John Smith to Congress, 
has been seizing upon the power of the govern- 
ment ; and the slave interest, with six millions 
of white people, and we with thirteen millions of 
white people—they have got the Supreme Court 
ot the United States, and they have got the Cir- 
cuit Courts, too. Yes, oddly enough, it turns 
out that six millions of men have five Judges, 
while thirteen millions have but four. That fact 
explains the safeness of the depository of the 
question of Slavery with the Supreme Court of 
the United States, and Douglas thinks, on the 
whole, that the Supreme Court of the United 
States is the best place to put it — for the pre- 
sent. [Laughter.] And, gentlemen, is not this 
an enormous fraud upon an honest people who 



suppose that everybody is as honest as them- 
selves 1 Why, the circuit of one of the Supreme 
Court Judges — Judge McLean — contains four 
millions of white people : while one circuit pre- 
sided over by a Supreme Court Judge in the 
Slave interest, and which contains within its ju- 
risdiction the States of Mississippi and Arkansas, 
contains a population of 450,000 whites. A 
Northern Judge being made equal to the task of 
presiding over a circuit having five millions of 
active, enterprising white people, while to do the 
business of a quiet, peace-loving slave- owner's, 
one judge is required for less than a half million 
of whites. But, furthermore, whenever the or- 
ganization of the Supreme Court shall be adjust- 
ed, according either to the claims, or the pres- 
sure of business, or the amount of population, 
there will be at least six of the nine judges rep-^ 
resenting the Free States, and three only repre- 
senting the Slave States; then we will agree that 
the Supreme Court of the United States of Ameri- 
ca is the place to settle the question of Liberty 
and of Property. [Applause,] 

It is a great mistake, gentlemen, to suppose 
that there is anything irreverent in calculating 
upon changes of opinion in the Courts of Jus- 
tice. Lawyers have a prevalent notion that they 
change pretty often, and suitors sometimes find 
that whereas on a particular point the Court 
in one case decides against them, when three 
months after the case is again raised, and they 
are in opposite interest, it is decided agamst 
them too. And the Supreme Court of the United 
States— that venerable tribunal in regard to 
which neither by tone, by gesture, nor by impli- 
cation will I ever raise my voice, let them be 
judges of the cases that come before them — let 
them decide tbem right or wrong— a free people 
must maintain their judiciary or they have no 
defence for their liberties. [Applause.] But 
some years ago it was the settled law of that 
Court— settled by the judgment of the great 
Chief Justice Marshall, and concurred in by his 
brother judges, that a corporation— a banking 
corporation if you please— could not be sued in 
a United States Court unless every stockholder 
was a citizen of one particular State That was 
the law year after year, and the Court decided 
in favor of one interest and against another in 
numerous instances upon that point. But a few 
years later the Court turned right around and 
said that the previous decision was all a mis- 
take—and that the locality gave the jurisdiction 
of the Court without reference to the residence 
of the stockholders, and that a New York Bank 
could be sued in a New York District, although 
the stockholders might live partly in Massachu- 
setts and partly in South Carolina. This, gen- 
tlemen, shows that differences of opinion may 
gain groGud on subjects that come before the 
Courts 5 and when the great question on the 
meaning of the Constitution is argued before the 
Supreme Court of the United in reference to 
whether slaves are property under the jurispru- 
dence of the United States, let u? hope at least 
that a different judgment will be given, and that 
the Court will not hold that Slavery can be main- 
tained in the State of New York under the sanc- 
tion of the Federal Constitution, [Applause.] 

OPINIONS LIABLE TO CHANGE, 
Well, gentlemen, when opinions are ail run- 
ning one way it is very easy to say they will 
never change, but change ia the law of politics 



12 



as well as in all else, and the people who think 
it so dangerous and so threatening to our liber- 
ties and to the Constitution of this country, 
should the Republican Party be trusted with 
the rule in the Federal Government, when they 
see it carried on by the Republican party even 
they may change their opinion. [Applause.] 
Changes quite as remarkable as that have oc- 
curred in subjects that are not connected with 
politics. We are all familiar now with the sub 
ject of lail roads and the speed and safety of 
trains of cars. But let me read to you what a 
grave reviewer said thirty-five years ago in the 
first English periodical — the London Quarterly, 
Satd he : — 

" We are not advocates for visionary projects that in- 
terfere with useful establishments. We scout the idea 
of a rail road as impracticable. * * * What can be 
more palpably absurd and ridiculous than tha pros- 
pects of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stage 
coaches? [Liiughter.] We should as soon expect the 
people of Woolwich to suffer themselves to be fired 
off upon one of Gongley's ricochet muskets, as to put 
themselves at the mercy of such a machine going at 
such a rate." [Loud laughter.] 

Gen, Nye — That is conservatism, 

Mr, EvABTS : Now theee conservative people 
who have all the while been riding in the slow 
coaches of a Pro-Slavery administration have 
been scouting the idea of anything so " visiona- 
ry " as a Republican Government interfering 
with " useful establishments," (that is the Demo- 
cratic party,) and they think it would be as mad 
as for the people of this country to be " fired ofi^ 
from one of Congreve's ricochet rockets " as for 
them to trust Lincoln and Seward with the con- 
duct of this Government, [Laughter.] But they 
will live to travel fast and comfortably to the 
Pacific Rail Road march of free labor and free 
institutions, [Applause.] 

THE REAL SECTIONALISM OF THE COUNTRY. 
But, gentlemen, the real sectionalism of this 
country i3 the predominance of a particular in- 
terest that seeks its own aggrandisement at the 
expense and sacrifice of the common rights. 
Such, gentlemen, is the institution of Slavery — 
a State institution protected by laws — a property 
institution, as they call it, but an institution that 
for its own aggrandizement has striven to con- 
trol, and has controlled, and will control while 
it may, the destinies of this c mntry. Why, see 
how these orators from the South talk about the 
great staple, cotton. Mr. Yancey makes a 
speech to the merchants of New York on the 
subject of cotton. "Cotton," he says, "is a 
great production," Yes, he thinks " it is the 
mistress or the master of the world." Well, Mr. 
Yancey, that is all very fine; but whose cotton 
is that 1 Whose cotton 1 — why, the planters', of 
course. Yes, certainly it is. Each parcel of 
cotton that the planter raises, until he sells it, 
belongs to him ; but as an item of production of 
national wealth and of national power, whose 
cotton is it, Mr. Yancey 1 Come, now, speak 
the truth 1 It is the cotton of the Nation to 
which we both belong. Yes, Mr. Yancey, it is. 
We tolerate none of these separations of interest. 
You cannot provoke an envy at the prosperity, 
at the growth, at the wealth of any of the States. 
or at the powerful influence as an element of 
national strength and national wealth of the 
great product cotton. [Applause,] So, wher 
you set up that there is any such section as the 
South that owns cotton, or as the North that 



owns ships, understand that the locality of pro- 
perty is not to be confounded with the uni- 
versality of national interest, and that our ships 
are yours and your cotton is ours, [Applause.] 

The Republican Party favors no such disposi- 
tion of separating the interests of the country. 
I fear that the slaveholding interest has allowed 
itself to be drawn into too much of this senti- 
ment, and that it looks really with more compla- 
cency at the building up of Manchester, Liver- 
pool, Havre and Paris by the productions of the 
South than it does upon the building up of Bos- 
ton, Lowell, New York, or your own manufac- 
turing towns. Let us have an end of this. Let 
us understand, then, the commercial question of 
this country, that, gifted with a domain that ex- 
tends from ocean to ocean, inhabited by a peo- 
ple whose enterprise is baulked by no difficul- 
ties and runs into every peaceful avenue to de- 
velopment, formed by Providence with a hardy 
region that develops the man and the woman 
and the child who, in our part of the country, 
are able and willing to work with their hands 
and with their heads, having a vast grain- pro- 
ducing region in the valley of the Mississippi, 
and blessed by Providence with a monopoly, if 
you please, of the great staple for clothing the 
world, in your boasted cotton ; all these are, by 
honest American industry, laid down as the rich 
tribute to the genius of the Constitution, to the 
strength of the Union, and to the enlargement of 
free and prosperous society. [Loud applause.] 
But when you turn around and talk about cotton 
being master of the freemen of the world ; that 
the liberties of this country and the liberties of 
England hang, forsooth, upon a cotton thread ; 
when you ask us to adopt the doctrine that, in- 
stead of new shirts being made for men to wear, 
that men were made to wear new shirts, that 
cotton dominates over the free spirit of commer- 
cial nations, you mistake your audience for the 
utterance of such ideas, [Applause.] Why, gen- 
tlemen, this Mr. Yancey would doubtless have 
us believe that the great Hercules of free labor 
that is to perform his twelve tasks of laying out 
this continent for the habitations of justice and 
freedom for generations unnumbered, yet to 
come, finds his final fate, as Hercules of old did 
in the shirt of Nessus, under whose debilitating 
poison he yielded up the vigor of his life, Mr. 
Yancey, this great cotton shirt of yours that you 
have wrapped around the world, may keep it 
warm, but it will never control the beatings of 
its heart. [Applause.] 

SOUTHERN THREATS OF SECESSION. 

Now, gentlemen, the present trouble with our 
friends in the Slave States is that when they 
come to complaining of difficulties and of appre- 
hension, (and probably they feel them in some 
sort,) they do not seem to know what to propose, 
if anything, for us to do. They say if Lincoln is 
elected, though everything is done the Constitu- 
tion says shall be done, — though he has the most 
votes, (and it is the duty of somebody to ^hrow 
votes so as to elect somebody, if possible,) yet, 
after all this, if Lincoln is elected, they will se- 
cede from the Union ! Why ? Is it not consti- 
tutional 1 Yes, it is constitutional, but it threat- 
ens alj kinds of mischief. Well, we ask, what 
have you say about it 7 Who, under Heaven 
shall we vote for 1 Down South you do not seem 
to be agreed upon this subject. You are voting 



13 



for Bell, yon are voting for Douglas. "Do yon ex- 
pect to elect either of them 1 No. We want to 
beat Lincoln! [Langhter.] Well, we might 
help yon beat Lincoln, but whom shall we elect 1 
Gentlemen, do yon snppose that the pnblic mind 
of the country is in a state to tolerate a discus- 
sion of this question, when there are votes enough 
to elect Lincoln, and not votes enough to elect 
anybody else. They will say, " We must have a 
President, and we must have Lincoln if we can- 
not have anybody else ;" and cur answer must 
be, until yon show some concurrence of senti- 
ment, how do we know but that, if we should 
help yon to elect Douglas, you would not secede 
as you have threatened 1 And some of you say 
that Douglas is worse than Lincoln ! Others of 
too, say that Breckenridge threatened the coun- 
try; and still a part of you say that Bell is a 
traitor to Southern rights ! What a bad lot of 
candidates there is before the people. Let us 
make haste and elect one of them, and hope for 
"better luck next time." [Laughter and ap- 
plause.] 

But this is Mexican politics — not ours — this 
saying that it is Constitutional to elect anybody 
who has the most votes, and if it turns out to be 
a man they like they will submit, but if it is a 
man they don't like they will not. Now here is 
our country — a great country, with a Constitu- 
tion, a Union, prosperity, happiness, wealth, ag- 
grandizement, power and fame. Are we to suf- 
fer these childish suggestions to interfere for a 
moment with our actions unless it be to offset it 
by a greater aggregate vote for the candidate 
upon whose election they would suggest a sub- 



version of American liberty 1 Their principle is, 
that there is a power in this country that is 
stronger than the Constitution, and can subvert 
it and the laws, when we exercise our light of 
sufirage. If that be so, the sooner we find it out 
the better, and we will settle that matter in our 
turn, leaving as broad and firm and rich a legacy 
to our children as we received from our fathers. 
Now, gentlemen, I shall detain you no lorger, 
but with one suggestion shall leave this subject 
thus imperfectly treated, though I have trespass- 
ed much upon your patience. Lord Bacon says 
that "When you would have a tree produce 
more fruit than it is used to do, it is not anything 
that you can do to the boughs, but it is stirring 
the soil and putting fresh moulds about the 
roots that must work it." Now, our fathers 
planted this tree of constitutional liberty to 
flourish forever, to domineer with its protecting 
shade over this whole continent, from ocean to 
ocean, and be a shelter for generation after gen- 
eration of men that should be true to the princi- 
ples of liberty and true to the principles of jus- 
tice. The winds of agitation may sweep in the 
boughs and the ordinary contrivances of party 
may keep up, if yon please, the appearance of 
active intelligent care of the government ; but I 
tell you that it has not produced as good fruit of 
late as it used to do. It is not anything that 
you do to the boughs, but it is stirring about the 
roots and extending the free soil from which they 
must derive nourishment that it is to reproduce 
and amplify forever and forever the growth, the 
beauty, the flower and the fruit which belong to 
its nature. [Loud applause and cheers.] 



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